S6 Foodbank: Faith in Action

Finley Hammatt

S6 Foodbank has been bringing people together throughout its 10-year history. From its roots in 2011, in the wake of a financial crisis and ensuing austerity, S6 Foodbank now has eleven locations across the city, and it is continuing to expand. For founder Chris Hardy and manager Jayne Franklin, though, the foodbank is about more than feeding the hungry: it’s about faith in action. We spoke to Chris and Jayne about the role that their faith plays in their service to the community.

“The entire organisation was divinely inspired,” reflects Chris.  Within a week of becoming a Christian - back in 1999 - Chris heard God talk to him, telling him to “feed the city”. At first he resisted, remembering thinking, “This sounds right boring!” Looking back, however, Chris says, “God was taking me on a journey through what I needed to go through. And am still going through… to get ready really for what’s coming.”

For Chris this involved dealing with his violent past and anger issues with the help of Christ, his wife, and a counsellor. “Still, every day, I have to make a decision about which Chris I want to be.”

Eventually Chris did accept God’s call to feed the city. As a member of St Thomas’ Church, Philadelphia, Chris was struck by the way that St Thomas’ responded to the needs of the community through its social programmes.

Initially, Chris was involved in one of the Restore projects run through the church. “I was meeting people who were coming in saying that they were hungry, that they needed food, so I moved on the need of the community.”

Chris connected with the Trussell Trust and began a foodbank; first feeding a handful of families out of a single building on Cross Bedford Street. Since then S6 Foodbank has “exploded” and is now serving thousands of households.  Always humble, Chris refuses to take credit, saying, “Yeah, it looks impressive but I can honestly say it’s God who’s done it, not me.”

Jayne’s story takes a different path. “My first charity role was as a Debt Centre manager, helping people with their debt. I was reaching out to people experiencing poverty, wanting to help them practically but also wanting to give them opportunities to find out more about Jesus, and welcome them into a community.”

Jayne was also overseeing all the social action ministries in her church. However, Jayne’s work was transformed during the pandemic. “The pandemic hit,” she recalls, “and like anywhere else, a lot of our projects had to close down, but overnight, our foodbank exploded.”

Since then, Jayne’s role has been in helping S6 Foodbank grow to meet this demand, to “ensure that people experiencing poverty in our city are at least getting food.”

Jayne sees her work with the foodbank as one part of her spiritual mission to “see heaven invade earth”. “I get teary every time I think about the volunteers,” she shares, explaining that the foodbank volunteers are absolutely essential to the project and embody its values brilliantly.

Jayne says that the work of the charity has spiritual significance for her, because “if Jesus was physically here now, and we could see him, he would be at the foodbank. He’d be sitting on a table chatting to people and just being with them.” Creating a unified and supportive community is an essential part of the foodbank for Jayne: “For me, it’s always been about getting alongside other people”.

As I speak with Jayne it’s clear that prayer is foundational to her life and social action. When asked if there was anything she’d like the Arise community to pray for, she listed off several requests in quick succession, smiling with a tear in the eye.

“I’m so thankful for the donations given, either financial or actual,” she says, sharing that she has been “blown away by the number of people who’ve offered to volunteer.” She prays for the broad range of people she has worked with though the foodbank; “I’ve loved working together with other organisations, whether they are faith communities or not, and whether they are professional agencies or not.’’

Jayne invites us all to pray that the supply of food to the foodbank remains strong and for those in poverty in Sheffield who are humble enough to ask for help.

You can find out more about ways to support and get involved with the food bank by going to Sheffield S6 Foodbank | Helping Local People in Crisis.