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London cyclists join project to distribute bagged lunches to homeless

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An initiative to feed some of London’s most vulnerable people amid the COVID-19 pandemic is receiving a boost from the cycling community.

Wesley Hill, 17, of London hauls a load of about 40 bagged lunches for homeless people down York Street toward the Thames Valley Parkway on  Friday. Hill, who uses a child trailer that once held him, said he was “voluntold by my dad” that he would be delivering lunches made by RBC Centre with support from the London Food Bank. (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press)
Wesley Hill, 17, of London hauls a load of about 40 bagged lunches for homeless people down York Street toward the Thames Valley Parkway on  Friday. Hill, who uses a child trailer that once held him, said he was “voluntold by my dad” that he would be delivering lunches made by RBC Centre with support from the London Food Bank. (Mike Hensen/The London Free Press)

Close to 30 volunteers have begun assisting RBC Place and the London Food Bank with delivering bagged lunches across the city, reaching each day more than 150 homeless people, many of which wouldn’t normally access services offered by the food bank.

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“What we discovered through COVID-19 is that there’s a bunch of people that don’t access to that stream,” said Glen Pearson, co-director of the London Food Bank.

“The big revelation is that the vulnerable were way more vulnerable than what we thought, but also it’s very hard to access them and it’s difficult for them to access us, so we have to find out a good way of doing that.”

The lunches are being prepared in collaboration with chefs and staff at RBC Place as well as Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU). They are then delivered to agencies working on the front lines.

When approached by the Pillar NonProfit Network, which also connected the convention centre and the food bank for the program, avid cyclist Shelley Carr jumped at the opportunity right away.

“We put out a call for volunteers on all the cycling networks and we were swamped,” said Carr, who’s known as London’s “bicycle mayor.”

“We had 30 people in five days,” she said.

Though not all of them are delivering meals yet, the extra hands will be welcome once the food bank and participating agencies ramp up their efforts, Pearson said.

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“We’re trying to slowly work this thing up and ramp it up and that is beginning to happen as agencies themselves develop capacity,” he said.

The initiative is also highlighting how different groups can come together to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and other emergencies, said Michelle Baldwin, Pillar’s executive director.

“We’re finding people are committed to helping for as long as they need to, and that it’s also sparking how we could continue to work together in new ways,” she said.

“This example is such a good one because you have partners who may not have worked together in this way before coming together, and it’s really quite exciting.”

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