Village Raw - ISSUE 4

VILLAGE RAW
COMMUNITY
THE NEXT MEAL
Martin Stone is the heartbeat of the Muswell
Hill Soup Kitchen. From here, he has also
started Next Meal – an innovative website
designed to end begging.
Words by Zoe Bee. Photos courtesy of Martin Stone.
Muswell Hill Soup Kitchen, based in the
Baptist Church on Duke’s Avenue, was
known as one of the “tough-nut soupies
of London”. Martin Stone took over
around 12 years ago, and since then he
has transformed it. “I wanted to produce
a product that others can emulate: to get
the cooking right, get the safety right,
get the support right,” says Martin.
Martin raised £50,000 from the local
community to install a new kitchen. Inside,
there’s an Aladdin’s cave of goods
donated from local schools’ harvest festivals,
Mitzvah Day from the Jewish community,
as well as items from the Sainsbury’s
food bank. Fresh food comes from
Gail’s Bakery and various schemes across
London, including the Felix Project.
There have been challenges on the
way to success. The soup kitchen fills an
acute need in the area – it’s probably no
coincidence that it opened soon after the
Friern Hospital closed in 1993. The original
room was a small, enclosed space
where violent scenes often occurred.
“You could have one disturbed guest
setting off another,” says Martin. “There
could be chaos.” To help, Martin moved
the space into a large, comfortable hall
which by day is used as a children’s nursery.
People told him that he couldn’t do it,
saying it was a terrible idea, but he did it
anyway. “It’s hard to get angry at a teddy
bear,” he says.
At night, the hall is a warm, welcoming
room where guests can eat great
food with great company. The tables have
multiple charging points, so the guests
can charge up their phones. On Sundays,
there are jazz musicians to entertain
people as they eat.
One of the reasons the soup kitchen
works so well is because it isn’t in
an area of deprivation – volunteers and
guests feel safe coming here. Martin
uses the talent in the community and
puts the soup kitchen’s success down
to them. A team of 60 volunteers from
all backgrounds work over five nights to
help with cooking, buying and maintaining
the kitchen’s high standards. Doctors
and psychiatrists observe and give
advice, while professionals come in to
check the kitchens. The musicians are
also volunteers. It’s a fun place to work,
where everyone is encouraged to share
their skills. “The great thing about an area
like this is that people don’t have to help,
but they do,” says Martin. “People have a
confidence that if something needs doing,
they can do it.”
Volunteer Jess has been coming on
and off for two years: “The guests are
cool and quirky. They’ve always got a
smile on their face, even in the circumstances
that they’re in. It’s somewhere
that instantly felt friendly and welcoming
to me, and I think that’s quite important
when getting people to come.”
“There’s a really nice atmosphere,”
says Anne, a librarian who has volunteered
at the soup kitchen for over a year.
“A lot of that is down to Martin. He’s a
very relaxed sort of person. Even though
he’s not keeping control over everything,
somehow it all seems to just work. Everyone
mucks in.”
Beyond the kitchen
While visitors to the soup kitchen can
enjoy an evening meal five days a week,
Martin and his team wanted to provide
more support for when the kitchen isn’t
open – so they wrote a booklet to tell
their guests where else they could go for
a free meal.
Martin was motivated to offer this extra
support by an incident in Stourbridge
in 2017. A woman met a homeless person
and, wanting to help, offered him food,
friendship and sometimes shelter with her
family. A year later, he murdered her and
her son at their home. At the trial, her husband
said: “I wish she had never met him.”
Martin says, “I’m really distressed
that a man is wife-less and son-less because
of a homeless person. He doesn’t
know, but I wanted to do it for him.”
“We want people to care about homeless
people, but we want to help them in
the centres where there’s a level of expertise,”
he adds. Martin is an expert in
social housing and is sad that his skills
couldn’t help the family in Stourbridge. “If
people have talent, they should use it,”
he says with passion.
So when a neighbour, Oli Roxburgh,
mentioned that his talent was making
“app-y things”, Martin asked Oli to turn
the soup kitchen booklet into an interactive
tool – and thus, Next Meal was born.
The website lists locations which offer
food and advice for vulnerable people.
Anyone who is concerned can visit
the website, print off a set of Next Meal
cards, and give one to anyone who is
begging. When this person looks up the
website on their mobile phone, GPS will
identify their location and Next Meal will
tell them their nearest place to go for immediate
support.
Martin’s idea, which has been a huge
success in Muswell Hill, has now been
rolled out to 300 Next Meal sites across
the UK and in Dublin, Paris, Milan, New
York and San Francisco. Martin predicts
Next Meal will eventually reach cities
where there are no centres, but by then
he hopes they’ll have enough money to
set up places of safety. “Using modern
technology, we’ll be able to track phones,
see what’s happening in the centres, and
monitor them from London.”
Next Meal has been rejected by some
cities, but this has simply motivated Martin
to try harder. “We have to think, ‘What
can we give?’. We have talent and we’re
accountable to that talent – all I’ve proven
is that you should just do it. I used my own
resources and believed in the project.”
Martin has written a book on poverty
and been awarded a Points of Light award
for significantly improving the lives of
Opposite page: Soup Kitchen
volunteers Rebecca, Amos and
Bradley. This page: Ann talking
with Martin Stone.
others. Is he proud of his achievements?
“Next Meal is a good idea,” he says, “but
it’s not me, it’s the community that’s
done this. But when people say they like
it... I’m chuffed.”
Further support
Other initiatives in the area include the
Community Cafe at St James Muswell Hill,
which is open every Tuesday from 11am
to 1pm. This is another friendly and welcoming
space where people in need can
come for soup and cake. Community Cafe
partners with various high street shops
in Muswell Hill which help to support it.
“The best way for people to help out is
to simply come along and have a coffee,”
says Hannah Whitehead, Head of Community
Ministries.
St James Muswell Hill is also taking
part in the Haringey Churches Overnight
Respite initiative. From 5 December to
14 March, the church is offering a threecourse
meal, bed and a warm breakfast
for 12 people in need during the coldest
12 weeks of the year. •
GET INVOLVED
MUSWELL HILL SOUP KITCHEN
If you would like to volunteer
at the Muswell Hill Soup
Kitchen, contact Martin Stone:
www.mhbc.org.uk/soup-kitchen.
Local businesses can request
Next Meal cards to display and
give to their customers, while
individuals can print them off
to carry around. You can find
out more about Next Meal at
www.nextmeal.co.uk and share
the page on social media.
OVERNIGHT RESPITE
To help at Overnight Respite,
contact Hannah Whitehead
at St James Muswell Hill:
hannah.whitehead@st-james.
org.uk. There are lots
of shifts available, from
helping to cook the threecourse
meal or dining with
the guests in the church,
to taking a night shift or
clearing away the breakfast
things in the morning.
People are also welcome
to donate toiletries and
warm hats, scarves, gloves
or socks (they all need
to be new).
OTHER CHARITIES
The following charities
also offer suggestions on
how people can help a rough
sleeper or homeless person.
Centre Point:
www.centrepoint.org.uk
Crisis:
www.crisis.org.uk
Shelter:
www.shelter.org.uk
St Mungos:
www.mungos.org
Street Link:
www.streetlink.org.uk
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