When Ivan became homeless for the first time in his life in June, he tried to “take it as an adventure”. “It was summer and I thought maybe I can be like that guy in the movie Into the Wild,” he said. “I am not scared of the dark and I thought I could camp out in my sleeping bag in parks around London. How bad could it be?”
But after a few months, Ivan, 34, a tradesman in construction who had lost his job and fallen on hard times, started to struggle. “I experienced real hunger,” he said. “I would eat people’s unfinished pizza discarded on park benches. One day I found some little garden allotments where people were growing onions and I ate them raw from the ground. I learned that having no money for food and the hunger that gnaws at you day and night is no joke.”
Ivan also started to feel a deep need for privacy. “Everyone needs a place to lay their head at night to feel safe and be left alone, but you have no privacy in a park,” he said. “I was trying not to get depressed but my mental health was low and it no longer felt like an adventure. I did not know where to turn — when you are homeless, it is hard to ask for help because you feel ashamed, so you try to hide it.”
Around the same time that Ivan started sleeping in parks, Monika, 41, a former dentistry undergraduate, also found herself homeless after a messy divorce. It had left her oscillating between shared accommodation and sofa surfing with friends, and after a while, her mental health also began to suffer. She was at a very low ebb.
Serendipitously, both of them heard from other homeless people about Ace of Clubs — a community centre in south London where homeless people and people with no recourse to public funds (such as asylum seekers) can get a daily nutritious hot lunch — and decided to investigate. For both, the trip to Ace of Clubs in Clapham would be a game changer and they would return every day, not just for sustenance, showers and a fresh change of clothes, but for companionship growing into friendship with the group’s many volunteers, and, over time, to begin the process of rebuilding their lives.
Last Friday, Evgeny Lebedev, the proprietor of The London Standard, went down to Ace of Clubs to meet them and to see for himself how this small Lambeth charity is making such a big difference. He was welcomed by Heidi Shrimpton, director of the charity, who showed him around. Then he and Monika unloaded crates of fresh produce from The Felix Project lime green van and chatted while they cracked eggs and chopped onions in preparation for the daily hot lunch about the transformative impact that Ace of Clubs has had on her life.
Ivan had been invited to come down as well, but as Heidi explained, with the help of case workers and volunteers at Ace of Clubs, he had got himself out of the park and into a night shelter, and then on to shared accommodation, redone his CV and restored his confidence to the extent that he had secured a new job in the construction sector. He could no longer be there because he was back on track and working.
Lord Lebedev said: “It’s incredible that places like this exist because they basically pick people up from the ground and build them up so they can get back on their feet. Without places like Ace of Clubs, they would be discarded by society. It’s very heartening to hear that, with the right daily help, people who have fallen on bad times can actually bounce back, find accommodation and apply for and secure jobs.”
He added: “Many people think of the homeless as rough sleepers who are lost causes, but it’s not true. Look at Ivan: a few weeks ago he was sleeping in a park and now he is on his way. It is places like this that make the difference.”
For context, Ace of Clubs is one of about 1,000 organisations supporting the disadvantaged in London which has fresh food supplied to them by The Felix Project. It is one of the beneficiaries of our A Place to Call Home Winter Appeal which seeks — in partnership with Comic Relief — to help refugees and people experiencing homelessness.
The Felix Project is London’s biggest food surplus redistribution charity and it will be one of the beneficiaries of the latest major backer of our campaign — Sainsbury’s, which has donated £500,000. It takes the total amount raised by our winter appeal to more than £1.6 million, including £500,000 from Comic Relief, £460,000 from This Day Foundation, and £100,000 from Barratt Foundation.
Ruth Cranston, director of corporate responsibility and sustainability at Sainsbury’s, said: “While for many, Christmas is a wonderful time filled with joy, for lots of people across the UK it can be the hardest time of year. That is why during December, every penny from each pack of our by Sainsbury’s and Free From classic mince pies sold will be donated, and we have committed £500,000 to the Standard’s campaign in association with Comic Relief.
“This donation will be used to support people experiencing food poverty through brilliant organisations such as The Felix Project. It is the third year we have supported this appeal and it is more important than ever.”
This winter, as more than 300,000 people in the UK face the bitter cold without a place to call home, Charlotte Hill, chief executive of The Felix Project, said demand for its services was greater than ever, with Felix on track to give out 37 million meals this year, a 15 per cent rise on the 32 million last year.
“The cost-of-living crisis has not gone away and this year one in eight working London families are using a food bank once a week to feed their children,” she said. “For some groups, such as refugees, who often live with no recourse to public funds, the impact of this new normal is deep and unforgiving. The Felix Project has been lucky to benefit from The London Standard’s winter appeal for some years. I hope people will give all they can to help us feed more people.”
Heidi, too, reported that the number using their services had skyrocketed. She told Lord Lebedev how the centre, which has been going for 30 years, had seen a sharp and dramatic increase in demand for its services in the past 18 months, from 120 users a day to around 200 on some days. Up to 15 per cent of these are without recourse to public funds, with the rest experiencing homelessness. “People can start queuing at least two hours before opening time for the hot lunch and the queue goes down the street,” she said.
But it’s not just food they are after, she added. “Loneliness is such a killer.” Charlie Glynn, senior support worker at Ace of Clubs, added: “We have clients saying we’re the first person they have spoken to that day — and often not just that day.”
As Monika chopped more spring onions and Lord Lebedev cracked more eggs, she talked about the companionship she had found at Ace of Clubs that had made her feel human again. “I ended up homeless and sofa surfing at friends for a long time because of a very difficult divorce,” she said. “Ever since I found Ace of Clubs, it helps with my depression. I volunteer here. I sort the second-hand clothes whenever I can and that keeps me positive.”
On a different day, Monika also met and told her story to Lennie Ware, co-host of the hit Table Manners podcast, which she runs with her singer-songwriter daughter, Jessie Ware.
Lennie, who lives nearby in Clapham, came down to Ace of Clubs to talk to some of its 70 volunteers, such as cook Ishmael, who was preparing chicken curry and rice, as well as beneficiaries of the project. Monika told Ware how she had come to the UK from Poland in her early twenties but was British now after becoming naturalised. She came from a typical middle-class family, she said, and after dropping out of university, she moved here “to work and to seek a better life”. After starting out as a waitress and bartender, she got a job at an off-licence and then, for four years, became a care worker for a disabled man in Camberwell, lodging also in his property.
“When that job ended, so did my accommodation and that was when I became homeless,” she said. “I stayed with friends, slept on sofas. I got married and we had a home, but the landlord of the block decided to refurbish and we got evicted, and we both had to sofa surf and live with friends. The whole experience has left me suffering anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. From June I was sofa surfing, otherwise I’d be in a shelter or on the street.”
Monika added: “I ended up here at Ace of Clubs around June. I was struggling mentally and financially and I felt very tense. I met Charlie Glynn and she asked me, ‘What do you need?’, and I started to cry. I needed so many things that I did not know how to answer her but I knew that I needed help. Now I come regularly.” Ace of Clubs, she emphasised, was her “family” — “where they support and look out for each other”.
Ware asked readers to get behind our appeal, saying: “Nobody should be without a warm space and a hot meal this winter. Visiting Ace of Clubs, there is a real sense of community between the staff, volunteers and service users. It’s a welcoming space for those facing homelessness this winter and I urge everyone to give what they can.”
In a nutshell
Our winter appeal, A Place to Call Home, in partnership with Comic Relief, is seeking to help fund organisations in London and across the country that support asylum seekers and people experiencing homelessness.
To make a donation visit: comicrelief.com/winter
How you can help
£10 could provide a young person travel to meet a wellbeing mentor and have a hot meal
£50 could provide travel to work or school for a month for an at-risk youth
£150 could refurbish a bike for an adult refugee giving them freedom to travel independently
£500 could train ten people with experience of homelessness to become homeless health advocates
£1,000 could enable one of our partners to fully support a young person throughout the year
