About
About our foodbank
Here is an introduction to Sparkhill Foodbank.
The foodbank is one of numerous projects run by Narthex Sparkhill, a registered charity based at The Narthex Centre, St Johns Church, Sparkhill in Birmingham. Our mandate is “encouraging cohesion through education; social action; families, children and young people’s work.
Sparkhill foodbank project is funded by the National Lottery through the Big Lottery Fund. We are in our fourth five-year grant to help run the foodbank, recruit and train 100+ volunteers and raise the profile and local response to poverty. The grant does not include the cost of the food parcels so the project is dependent on the goodwill and generosity of local people, faith groups, schools, agencies and businesses to donate. We also have over 40 collection points for the community to drop off food donations.
We have been running for almost 11 years. Throughout 2022, we provided food parcels to 20,444 people. Sparkhill Foodbank now has a network of 350 referral agencies.
We have 4 distribution centres in addition to our main Tyseley site: Sparkhill, Stechford, Balsall Heath and Hall Green.
Our parent charity, Narthex Sparkhill, also runs other projects that include:
- A clothing bank
- A resource centre for asylum seekers and victims of domestic abuse providing quality second-hand clothing and baby clothes and equipment
- Money and budgeting advice
- Support to find employment and volunteering
- Carer support
- Positive Futures employment programme