Sunderland fans help city soup kitchen Christmas appeal smash £60,000 barrier

Fan’s website and podcast Roker Report has been supporting the Sunderland Soup Kitchen for the last three years – and this year’s Christmas appeal has raised around as much as the first two brought in altogether.

Now organisers are urging city businesses to get behind the drive and make it a Christmas to remember for service users.

Black Cats’ boss Lee Johnson recently visited the kitchen with members of the Roker Report team to see their work for himself and the gaffer has chipped in £200 to the appeal.

Other familiar names among the list of donors are former SAFC star Duncan Watmore and club part-owner Charlie Methven.

The Roker Report team started the ball rolling with a £13,000 donation made up from their sponsorship and royalties for the year, but spokesman Rich Speight said they had been astonished by the response from listeners.

"It started in 2019 – we had supported a few different causes that sometimes did not really fit with our values,” he said.

"We are all quite socially conscious and we wanted to partner with a charity and use our profile – we have got hundreds of thousands of followers across various social media platforms – to do something good.”

The team was put in touch with soup kitchen founder Andrea Bell and the rest is history: “A couple of the lads, Ant and Tom, went down to do some volunteering , just to check it out and see what the situation was,” said Rich.

"We were blown away by what they were doing and how dedicated Andrea was. She ahd been working as a letting agent and could see for herself how difficult it was for some people – so she decided to do something about it. She works 365 days a year.

"The first year we raised about 20 grand, which was fantastic, then we raised £31,000 last year.”

The support from the Roker Report appeal has allowed the Soup Kitchen to move into its own premises, Albert’s Place in High Street West, and means Andrea and the team are able to budget and plan ahead secure in the knowledge funding is there.

"We were working from a small trailer – now we have got a purpose-built kitchen,” she said.

“We have to buy everything we use so the Roker Report funding means we are able provide people with really good food because the quality of what we can buy is of a much higher level.

"It takes the pressure off because it is all ringfenced for food. We know that money is there.”

She has been overwhelmed by the support from Roker Report: “It is just astonishing what they have done,” she said.

"It means so much for the people we help.”

Furniture giant ScS is the latest to throw its weight behind the good cause, with a contribution of £1,000, as well as £400 in gift vouchers and goods bought by staff.

Organiser Sandra Wales said: “Everybody is working from home so we set up a pot people could donate to, which we could use to buy things the Soup Kitchen needed.”

To donate, visit https://www.gofundme.com/f/sunderland-community-soup-kitchen-fundraiser-2021

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