Our Vision
A community united to address the causes and consequences of poverty.
Our Vision Explained:
Community: The full range of Sufra’s stakeholders–from our donors to our staff to our volunteers and guests.
United: We collaborate closely with our stakeholders so that we can better achieve our shared objectives.
Causes: What led our guests to be in their situation. These causes range from an inability of our guests to navigate the benefits system, to government policies that exacerbate poverty and inequality.
Consequences: The impact of our guests being in their situation. Consequences include food insecurity, homelessness, social isolation and a host of mental health difficulties that our guests experience.
Our Mission
Sufra provides food aid, welfare advice and training to people in crisis, whilst working with the wider community to campaign for an end to poverty.
Sufra works on the front-line in the fight against hunger and poverty whilst also offering a wide range of services and community-based activities that empower individuals and families to overcome impoverishment and social isolation.
Statement of Principles
1. We take a holistic approach, based on human rights
Food aid is essential – but it is not the solution to food poverty. Access to nutritious food is a human right and it is the responsibility of governments, not charities, to create the conditions needed to uphold these rights. To enable all people to meet their basic needs and live in dignity, the UK government needs to pursue policies that ensure wealth, power and resources are shared more equally between all people.
Our approach is holistic and designed to reduce dependency on food aid. Our services have developed in response to the underlying needs of our guests. We are committed to providing a range of services and programmes that can help address the root causes of financial crisis and reduce the need for food aid.
We recognise that there are different approaches to reducing food poverty. We embrace a culture of critical reflection on the nature and effectiveness of our food bank and other services. We are committed to innovation and experimentation with new approaches to meeting our core objectives
2. We are embedded in the local community
We are a grassroots charity embedded in the local community. As we develop and grow, we are committed to remaining responsive to the changing needs of those we serve, representing their voices and engaging them in making the decisions that affect them. We seek always to maintain a close relationship between our guests, volunteers, staff and trustees.
We are more effective when we collaborate with others. We are committed to working in partnership with all our stakeholders – from our supporters and volunteers, to voluntary sector organisations, businesses and other food banks in northwest London.
We serve people of all and no faiths without discrimination. Our roots lay in the Muslim community, which provided the funding and support needed to establish the charity. We continue to work closely with this community as well as a wide range of other faith-based (and secular) organisations. Our staff, trustees and volunteers are from a multitude of backgrounds (both faith and non-faith based), our values are universal and humanitarian, and we serve everyone in need without discrimination.
3. We respect the dignity of our guests and the needs of the planet.
We are committed to upholding and enhancing the dignity of our guests. We aim never to turn people away when they are in need. Our emergency aid services provide a gateway to accessing other services designed to empower our guests, improve their wellbeing and reduce their dependency on food aid.
We value the wellbeing and development of our staff, volunteers and trustees. We aim to provide everyone who works at Sufra with opportunities to grow, learn and develop new skills, whilst supporting their mental health and wellbeing.
We are committed to environmental sustainability. We recognise the importance of caring for our environment. We make use of food that would otherwise go to landfill, grow fruit and vegetables without the use of chemical pesticides/fertilisers, and compost our food waste. We also use solar panels to generate energy in our main building and reuse, upcycle and recycle our waste.
