Businessman, author and local barber Patrick Phipps has collaborated with Feeders UK to organise a pop up food bank in his barber studio Cut Above The Rest in East Ham.

The idea came about during a chat between Patrick and Randy Cee, the founder of Feeders UK.

Patrick loves helping out and feeding the local community. Due to Covid and a lack of staff his barber studio is closed on Sundays. This presented Patrick and Randy with the opportunity to organise a pop up food bank in Cut Above The Rest.

Feeders UK is a charitable organisation that provides pop up food banks. Not only do they supply to food banks, hostels, refuges, kids clubs and Covid-positive families, they also help out people who are physically unable to visit outreach projects.

They feed the homeless with pop up stalls serving free hot meals throughout Essex and London. To date Feeders UK have given away over £300,000 of free quality food to the people in need in only 12 weeks.

Patrick said: “I was a bit scared because Feeders UK provided so much food I didn’t think it was going to go, but the day was great. We planned to start at 12pm and finish at 3pm but we ran out of food by 1.30pm so the day went really well.

“We fed a lot of people and I saw many smiling faces. Most people couldn’t understand why we were giving away free food so we had to convince them to grab a bag.”

Patrick may organise another pop up in the future. In the meantime he is concentrating on building and opening his barber academy where he will be training 16 to 18 year olds so he can give them a working skill.

For more information on how you can help Feeders UK continue their much needed work in the community please visit their website.

http://thefeeders.org/

Patrick Phipps on Spotify

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