Portsmouth restaurant owners donate time and food to support Caritas InSight homeless project in the city

Anglo Bangla, a Bangladeshi restaurant in Tangier Road, has provided food to the Caritas InSight Project every Tuesday for the past three weeks, despite the toll the pandemic has taken on business.

The offer of support from business partners Kamran Islam and Girts Zartmanis came via a WhatsApp group established by Mark Sage, the Tackling Poverty coordinator at Portsmouth City Council.

This group aims to prevent food waste by connecting volunteers who can provide surplus food to groups that need it most.

Through being part of this group, Anglo Bangla’s owners reached out to say they wanted to provide food on their day off on a Tuesday, which coincides with the day Sue’s group meets.

When asked what inspired the offer, Kamran said that in Bangladeshi culture it is considered your civic duty to balance out the suffering you see around you.

Kamran added: ‘We’re not doing this for money. We’ve got the food, we’ve got the kitchens, so we are going to use them to put hot food in people’s bellies.’

InSight helps approximately 40 isolated, marginalised, or homeless people every week.

The group began in 2016 as a coffee and cake morning but has ‘changed radically’ since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Sue Cregan, the group’s founder and co-ordinator.

Her group relies entirely on the support of people like restaurant owners Kamran and Girts and described their generosity as ‘incredible’.

The attendees of InSight are not just people experiencing homelessness. Some suffer from mental-health problems, addiction, isolation, or marginalisation in society.

Some are just struggling to feed themselves or their families due to the economic impact that the coronavirus pandemic has had on those in precarious or low-paid employment.

Sue said: ‘We’ve seen a lot of new people [in the last twelve months]. A lot more people are sleeping rough, or we are seeing young people where one or two members of the family have been furloughed and that 20 per cent drop in income has meant the difference between them meeting the food bill or not meeting the food bill.’

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It is not just homeless people which Insight provides support to, as the excess food is boxed up and delivered to mothers at a vulnerable women’s home.

There is also a food bank provided by the group which creates parcels for families that have been identified as at-risk by local schools, with boxes helping to feed 28 children from 11 families.

This support is only a fraction of the work that is going on at InSight and at similar groups across the city to look out for around 200 rough sleepers.

There is now at least one place open every day of the week to provide food and support in the city where previously there had been nothing offered on a Saturday.

For more information on InSight, visit portsmouthdiocese.org.uk/caritas-projects or email Sue Cregan at [email protected]

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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