Providing support for Rame with the Peninsula Trust

The Peninsula Trust in Rame, South East Cornwall, has been providing support in many forms to the community since its inception in 2014. From the community hub, Rame Centre, the Trust runs a pop-up library and post office while also providing advice and support for anything from benefits to getting a blue badge for your car. The Trust also runs and maintains several accommodation properties and work units in the area. Keeping it all running is a group of four part-time staff and over 30 volunteers.

Cost of Living crisis response

The Peninsula Trust started to receive food from FareShare South West in February 2021 to help meet the increasing requests for food bank parcels. “It was very much a crisis response to the pandemic initially,” said Kate Fitch, one of the Trust’s staff members.

“Being able to access food from FareShare South West enabled us to open Rame Community Kitchen, a community larder available to anyone in our community who is in need of food,” said Kate. “A lot of the time it will be accessed by people who are self-employed and struggling, pensioners on low income or those who have just applied for Universal Credit. On average, a household will visit us roughly six times during a period of crisis. It’s very much a short term solution for most people while they’re getting back on their feet.”

Looking to the future, Kate anticipates that cost-of-living increases will have an impact on the people the Trust is helping:

“I think we’re going to see a change in the duration that households will need our help and an increase in low income, working families. At the moment people are only needing help in times of short term crisis, however the current economic climate may mean that more people have to rely on us for longer. Our future plans for cookery classes would mean being able to bring people together to eat while teaching them how to cook more cost-effectively with the fresh produce we can get from FareShare South West . I hope that will really help households cope with the increases to the cost of living.”

Helping families and children

While serving people of all ages and backgrounds, the Trust also receives a lot of visitors with young children: “We see quite a lot of families coming to us; families with school-aged children. We advertise our service to the local schools and pre-schools and time our opening hours to fit in with the school run.

“It’s important that we make sure families are able to feed their children and that they’re able to eat themselves as well. We often see that the kids like breakfast cereals. They go down really well because that’s a potentially more high-cost item. And because we’re quite geographically isolated, it’s not easy to get to a big supermarket where the prices are higher.”