Little Village supports families with babies and children under five living in poverty across London, running a baby bank network to collect, sort and pass on pre-loved clothes and equipment. Parents are also supported by a dedicated signposting and guidance team, who offer advice and links to other services. In addition, the charity works with families to share their stories and campaign to fix the systems that trap them in poverty.
A group of 20 MML team members spent the day at Little Village’s Hounslow warehouse, helping to manage donations to ensure the items are in a suitable condition to be gifted to families. This included checking items met quality standards (would you gift them to a friend), sorting clothes and shoes by size, gender, and type, ensuring cots, buggies and other equipment are complete and with instructions, and making gift packs of underwear, socks, tights, bibs, linen, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed coming together as a team to support such a worthy cause. It was humbling to listen and learn about the difficult situations and decisions some of the beneficiary families are facing. By the end of the day, the impact of our efforts was clear with hundreds of bags of donations cleared and sorted.
With one third of all children under five in the UK living in poverty, there are lots of ways to support charities like Little Village. Whilst helping in the warehouse, we learnt of a current need for cots, with many cot mattresses being gifted to families without accompanying cots available. If you would like to donate an IKEA cot (£69) to Little Village, please order online (SNIGLAR beech, Cot, 60×120 cm – IKEA) and deliver to:
Dave Smith, Little Village, Unit 27 Treaty Centre, Service Yard 2, Douglas Road, Hounslow, TW3 1DA.
If you would like to make other donations, a wish list from the charity can be found here – For Common Good. Little Village have also made a specific request for good quality clothing for children under 10, particularly aged 2-6 years. Clothing can be donated directly to their hubs here – Donation Hubs.
