Aberdeen Salvation Army responds to coronavirus crisis

The Salvation Army in Aberdeen has launched a service for people who have been hit hardest by the covid-19 outbreak.

Running in partnership with Social Bite, the service aims to give people hot food, emergency food parcels and other essential items.

The Salvation Army is also part of the Community Hub working across Aberdeen and is now taking referrals from the hub to drive and deliver urgent food parcels.

Lieutenant Helen Froud, who leads the church and charity’s community work from its citadel on the Castlegate, said the outbreak had made the Salvation Army rethink how it delivers its support services and added: “With the closure of many low-cost shops and takeaways, such as Greggs and McDonalds, I was concerned that many people were missing on their only hot meal of the day.

“In response, we joined up with Social Bite to start a "gateway takeaway" service running out of our cafe. The team at Social Bite in Aberdeen have arranged to make the sandwiches and have them delivered to us every Friday. “People will be able to come into our cafe from 10am to 12pm on a Friday and pick up a bag filled with, soup, sandwiches, sweets and savouries etc. They will also be able to get things like toiletries, sanitary products and nappies. In the first few hours of opening we supported around a dozen people, some of whom were NHS workers on behalf of people they care for.

“The outbreak has made the Salvation Army rethink how we deliver our support services. We’ve been working on this takeaway idea for a few weeks now with our small team of younger volunteers. We have many older people in our church who can't help out but we're also blessed to have a great group of young people. We're grateful to them for their enthusiasm and willingness to help. They have all been fully trained on handling food safely and complying with social distancing guidelines.

"We're also grateful to Morrisons supermarket in Aberdeen for providing generous donations of food to support our response."