Llanidloes COVID-19 Volunteer Effort Steps Up-Free Fish and Chips

In keeping with the Good Friday tradition of eating fish, Llanidloes’ older and most vulnerable residents did not lose out this year despite Covid-19 restrictions and had free fish and chips delivered to their door.

On Good Friday this year Llanidloes Covid-19 Support Volunteers  delivered free fish and chips to 300 people across the Llanidloes district.  The volunteers were supporting an idea from Evans Fishbar to brighten up the day of some of the town’s residents.

The local fish and chip shop have been closed for a couple of weeks, due to safety reasons. However, they opened their doors especially for this effort.  Volunteers from the town were co-ordinated by experts in health and safety, to ensure timings between collection, social distancing and other stringent measures are in place, with 19 volunteers delivering fish and chips to 300 residents in a 3 hour period.

Chris and Lorraine Evans of Evans Fishbar, “We wanted to do a random act of kindness, to let people know they have not been forgotten.  We needed assistance from the volunteer group and other organisations to nominate recipients to receive the lunch. We then needed the support of the volunteers to help with the deliveries, to make this happen and the response from Llanidloes Covid-19 volunteers to do deliveries has been overwhelming”. 

The free fish and chip delivery is yet another voluntary initiative from Llanidloes and district, in response to Covid-19.  Volunteers have been active since the 16th March.

Clare Bound of Llanidloes Covid-19 Support Group, “The initiative from the fish and chip shop is an amazing generous act, and our thanks to Chris and Lorraine from Evans Fishbar.  So many people from the town have come together to respond to this challenge, it has been truly humbling.”

Town punching above its weight responding to this pandemic

· A telephone system set up and 3500 leaflets designed and printed in one day (funded by Llanidloes Town Council and Aztec Print.

·       Support group on Facebook set up currently over 1100 members

·       Over 130 local volunteers have come forward, eager to give to their community.

·       Leaflets delivered by volunteers to 70 areas of Llanidloes district in just four days.

·       By 19 March the first calls for support received, since then well over 348 calls for assistance have been responded to. In addition to this 471 deliveries have been made to people in the community.  Our system was set up before the government’s and does not just include those in the ‘extremely vulnerable category.

·       Llani Pantri set up as a food bank, to respond to those whose who need help.  There have been many generous donations.

·       Prescription delivery service set up in liaison with health services and PAVO, using the Support Network’s Volunteers.

·       Local resident GP is on board, to provide generic evidenced based advice through our support network to clarify information.

·       Numerous businesses have stepped up to provide deliveries, covering a large rural geographical area.

·       Businesses are ‘paying it forward’ by accepting donations, for example a limited number of free loaves available.

·       We have a dedicated team of 14 befrienders, if someone feels isolated and needs to chat, they know there is someone available at the end of the phone.

-  A website built and funded by PCQ will soon be available with more information about community support and how to get involved or access support www.llanic19.co.uk -

- Donations from the Fish and Chip event raised £1500 allowing the support group to set up the Llanidloes Covid 19 Mutual Aid fund. 

Appreciation

The town’s residents have been appreciative of local efforts,
“We have just moved to Llani, we have no family or friend network but we both with underlying medical issues.  We she just broke down crying in relief when we knew we could get support.”

Another resident thanked a volunteer,
“Thank you for risking your life to help someone in need, you are an angel sent by God to respond to someone's prayer.”

These sentiments of gratitude have been echoed by all the residents we are answering requests for help from. The town is really pulling together and seeing the cross generation links being forged is a magical moment in these desperate times.

For more information please visit https://llanic19.co.uk/contact/

-       Photos thanks to Stephen Smount