Young ambassadors to provide food parcels to those in need on Leeds estate

Youth worker Emily Jones, left, with some of the Community Ambassadors Programme members before lockdown.

Youth ambassadors in Leeds will give food parcels to the elderly and the vulnerable during half-term.

The inspiring idea to help those in need on the Sutton Park estate came from a group of young people on the Community Ambassadors Programme.

The scheme, which celebrates social action, is run by the Youth Association for the community arm of Clarion Housing Group.

On Friday, youth ambassadors from Clarion Futures Communities will distribute 30 food parcels donated by food charity FairShare. They will contain a wide range of food from pasta and flour to tinned goods.

The group stopped to pose for a picture while brainstorming some community ideas over food.

Emily Jones, a lead youth worker at the Youth Association, said: “I’ve been working with the young people on this project since August. Through lockdown they have been doing a lot of work online. They recognised the need in the area to feed these families, and they want to bring the community together. They’ve been working really hard on it.”

She added: “It’s nice to see because I think young people don’t get appreciated enough and sometimes they are misunderstood. Something like this just shows that they want to do something good for their community.”

The parcels, which will be distributed from the community centre at Sutton Park in a socially-distanced way, also contain messages of hope and solidarity from young people.

Emily said the core team had written messages like “Your community is there for you” and “Stay strong - we are all in this together”.

Food charity FairShare has provided goods for the community hampers.

She added: “They have also made a video for it as well. It says, ‘One thing you can do is to reach out to friends, family and the local community’. It’s like a TikTok video, a quick video, which says we are all feeling lonely at the moment, so reach out.”

The messages tie in with activities they have been doing during the pandemic, like sending out mental health tips to help people keep going through lockdown. Emily added: “It was six things you could do during lockdown. Each week we would do a different one. Last Monday we did a baking session. What we baked will be stuff that we are going to put into the food parcels. They’ve done a video of how you can make these things.”

Friday’s event is very much a pilot project, which they hope to continue in the future.