A celebration of people bringing positive change to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
AberNecessities
PROVIDING FOR UNDERPRILEGED FAMILIES WITH MICHELLE AND THALIA
There is an average of 4.6 million children living in poverty in the UK, which represents 34% of children in the country. AberNecessities is a charity that was launched in March 2019 to help provide necessary items to underprivileged families in Aberdeen. Since then, they helped around 4000 children in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire: “We’ve grown quite a lot since last year”, Michelle Herd, co-founder and chief operating officer says, “it’s been absolutely crazy”. I had the opportunity to visit the charity's office and was given a tour by one of the volunteers, Thalia.
As I start my tour around the office, the size of the first room strikes my attention. It is filled with cardboard boxes and bin bags. I immediately realise that there is a tremenduous amount of work to be done every day for them to be able to help families in need. Thalia tells me that the charity receives donation of clothes, toiletries, nappies, books and toys that are stored here at their office and that will later be distributed to families in need that have previously been referred by a third-party.
Professionals who know the family, such as social workers, teachers, foodbanks or midwives, have to fill out an application form to allow the family to benefit from the charity’s help: “Some schools refer children because they see them wearing shoes that are too small for them for example”, Thalia says. “Without this process, the charity would turn into a shopping mall”, she adds, explaining that it would be impossible for them to check if the families were really living in poverty.
When I ask about the bin bags and cardboard boxes, Thalia describes to me the long process that goes on between receiving donations and handing them out to the families. First, volunteers need to check that the clothes they received are in good conditions: “Our mindset is to only give clothes that we would accept to see our own children wear”, Thalia explains.
Then the clothes have to be washed before being sorted into boxes by types of clothes, age and gender. Even though some of the storage rooms look like a maze of shelves with boxes on them, most of the time the charity will be missing items from certain categories, which is why there is always a demand for more donations: “school uniforms are particularly
© Clara Maurillon
The donations in the office
important because school is the place where children get ridiculed if they come with old and dirty clothes”, Thalia asserts.
Apart from clothes, the charity also accepts donations of items such as toys or activity books: “We obviously don’t know if they have TVs to keep them entertained so we try to give them some bits and bobs to play with”, Thalia says. AberNecessities also gives out baskets with essential items to mothers who just gave birth in order to make sure that they can care for their new-born baby. Along with these boxes, families can receive different items of bedding, if they have a need for it. Thalia explains: “A new-born gets his box but maybe the parents are living on the floor or the other children don’t have any sheets for their bed”.
The charity put in place an Amazon Wishlist with items they need more of in order to give the opportunity to the community to buy some of these products while making a personal order. Thalia concludes by saying that, while it is a good thing that the organisation is rapidly growing, it also makes her realise how many people are living in poverty in Aberdeen. She now hopes that the charity will be able to help more and more people, especially in Aberdeenshire, in order to make these families’ lives a little better.
To learn more about Abernecessities folow these links:
© Clara Maurillon
Article written by Clara Maurillon