Marianne Daly has turned to an ancient staple to help the women of west Belfast weather the cost of living crisis: lentils.
At the Footprints Women’s Centre she teaches her students that the legume, one of humanity’s oldest sources of food, can bulk up curries, sauces and other dishes for a fraction of the price of meat.
“It’s cheap and delicious – you just need to have the awareness and confidence to use it,” said Daly. In addition to teaching cooking to young mothers Daly prepares takeaway meals for sale in the centre’s social supermarket, which offers 70% discounts on regular supermarket prices.
Footprints, a two-storey complex tucked into a housing estate in one of the most deprived areas of one of the UK’s most deprived regions, is aptly named. It helps vulnerable people to regain some balance in life, one step at a time.
The centre has operated for 31 years and now finds itself in the frontline of the cost of living crisis, which in Northern Ireland has collided with poverty, family breakdown and mental health problems, all exacerbated by patchy public services and government paralysis.
With the lowest income and average earnings in the UK, the region has been disproportionately hit by rising prices, said Joe Elliott, a senior analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which has studied poverty in Northern Ireland. “It’s hard to put into words how extremely terrible the situation is. So many people are facing so much financial pressure.”
Lack of free childcare and public transport leave people on low incomes especially vulnerable, said Goretti Horgan, a social scientist at Ulster University.
The challenge is especially acute in Colin, an outer area of west Belfast that includes Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore and is home to 30,000 people. Outsiders tend to steer clear, said Isobel Loughran, the centre’s CEO. “You have a community that people don’t want to drive through let alone live in.”
The housing estates of Colin were built in recent decades and lack the social cohesion of older neighbourhoods. There is no bank, no cinema and few amenities apart from a recently opened park. There are many lone parent families headed by women, said Loughran.
Donations to this year’s Guardian and Observer annual charity appeal will go – through its two partners, Locality and Citizens Advice – to scores of local charities and projects such as Footprints.
Food, that most basic of needs, has become a thread that connects its services. Every week its chiller van collects supplies from the charity FareShare, which gathers surplus supermarket stock that would otherwise end up in landfill. Volunteers stack the shelves and run Footprints’ small, brightly lit store. Prices are colour-coded: purple for 20p, blue for 30p, yellow for 40p and so on up to white, the maximum, for £1.50.
To avoid a run on supplies there is a 10kg limit for each shopper plus a cap on those eligible to shop: of Footprints’ 500 members about 80 at any one time have access to the supermarket, usually for three to six months.
“Some weeks for me it’s the difference between eating and not eating. If this wasn’t here an awful lot of us would be lost,” said Laura Walsh, 32, who has three children. Her £964 monthly universal credit does not cover basic expenses so if home alone she turns off lights and heating.
There is no stigma about using the social supermarket, said Shannon Hillick, 31. “Not any more. Everyone is struggling.” To save on gas she now showers rather than bathes her two children.
Both women have learned cooking tips from Daly (PricewaterhouseCoopers, a corporate partner, supplied the kitchen) such as the versatility of chickpeas, using bread rather than pastry for quiches, and involving children in cooking. Daly also does tastings of apples, pears and plums from the centre’s little orchard.
Another charity, the Community Sports Network, delivers bags of food and recipes as part of a “Munch club”. Walsh recently turned bread and mushrooms on the brink of expiry into vol-au-vents – a little victory in the endless budget struggle. “The cooking courses have taught me how to make decent, healthy dishes for my kids basically out of nothing.”
Perhaps just as important, the centre nourishes friendship and mental health through training, crisis intervention, peer support and advocacy, including a recent demonstration at the mothballed Stormont executive against domestic and gender-based violence.
Walsh and Hillick cherish their weekly maternal support meetings as opportunities to socialise and confide. Both have had friends who killed themselves. It is a thin line between loneliness and despair.
A stone’s throw from the centre social ills abound – drug taking, crime, dumping. In the orchard and playground and sensory garden, all enclosed by a fence adorned with colourful murals, it is easy to forget that.
