“Absolutely delighted, really really thrilled to bits”- The Fed wins a Heart of Salford Award

Social care charity the Fed is one of five winners of the Heart of Salford Awards.

The charity, comprised of staff and volunteers that help members of the Jewish community in the Manchester and Greater Manchester areas including Salford, won one of the awards given by Salford Council for Voluntary service (CVS) for Organisation of the Year.

We are thrilled & honoured to be specially recognised by @SalfordCVS Heart of Salford awards in the category of Best Organisation of the Year

The annual awards celebrate volunteering & communal enterprise – & we are delighted that this award is presented to our entire workforce pic.twitter.com/Gw32N4qFdk

— The Fed (@FED_Manchester) December 8, 2020

Lucy Edwards, a fundraiser for the Fed, said that the charity was “absolutely delighted, really really thrilled to bits”.

Since the beginning of this year, the Fed has seen demand for its services increase with the community helpline receiving 58 per cent more calls.

Edwards stated: “Our staff have worked really long hours, some of which has been in their own time so our staff have volunteered as well as our volunteers volunteering.”

Winning the overall Heart of Salford award would mean a lot to the Fed helping them gain recognition within the community allowing them to be able to help more people. The current climate has made the Fed, and the services they provide, even more important to members of the Jewish community.

According to Edwards: “We used to work with one in 10 Jewish households across the northwest in Greater Manchester and that’s now risen to 1 in 8 Jewish households so getting some recognition like this. It’s really nice to get that award and it really means something to the team so it’s brilliant.”

Edwards herself put the Fed’s nomination forward not expecting the win saying: “I really love working for the Fed and I’m really proud to be a part of it and I think that the people that we employ who are working on the front lines of the service really deserve that recognition. They’ve worked really really hard and so I thought we may as well put the submission in and see what happens.”

This time of year is especially important in the Jewish community because of Chanukah.

Despite the coronavirus pandemic, the Fed has still managed to keep the community’s spirits high as it has been providing gift packages of Chanukah food treats as well as candles.

Edwards said: “Last Thursday we delivered something in the region of 500 gift packages. Our volunteers all took 10 or so of them out and we delivered them to people who are vulnerable, living alone, maybe experiencing mental health issues or are a carer.”

According to Edwards: “A normal year we would have Chanukah parties, we’d have one for our volunteers, a big party for 80 odd people, we’d have a Chanukah party for our residents [at Heathlands Village]. We’d have children’s Chanukah parties in the children’s centres for children with additional needs or complex health conditions.

“The residents have their own choir and we would normally do a concert which has hundreds of people coming to it, families can come and listen, so we did a Chanukah video instead and that’s been put on YouTube.”

Salford CVS has been extremely important to the running of the Fed. According to Edwards: “The support that we get from Salford CVS is absolutely crucial to our smooth running of the organisation, certainly from my point of view as a fundraiser, I actually used to subscribe to various trust funding newsletters and I stopped doing it because the quality of information we get from Salford is so good, we don’t need to have those paid subscriptions anymore so I rely on their support to help us fundraise for the organisation hugely so we’re very grateful to them, thank you very much. Thanks for the award, it’s fantastic, thank you.”