Friday Fridge

29/06/2025

🌟Small Charity Spotlight: LifeHouse Portsmouth🌟

LifeHouse Portsmouth is a grassroots charity offering vital support to vulnerable individuals in the Portsmouth and Southsea area—especially those facing homelessness, addiction, or extreme hardship.

At its heart, LifeHouse is a free food kitchen and resource centre, serving hot meals and providing practical help to those in need. From nourishing breakfasts and dinners to food parcels, clothing, and even haircuts and foot care, LifeHouse is a lifeline for many who feel forgotten.

🛠️ What makes them different?
LifeHouse doesn’t just feed people—they restore dignity. Their team of passionate volunteers creates a welcoming space where guests feel seen, valued, and supported. Through signposting services, partnerships with local agencies, and a spirit of generosity, LifeHouse helps individuals take meaningful steps forward.

They believe in compassion in action—going the extra mile to ensure no one is left behind. 🌟

📢 Follow them: facebook.com/lifehousesouthsea

Visit our website to see their Food kitchen volunteering opportunity https://volunteer.hiveportsmouth.com/search-results/?postcode=&radius=5&keyword=lifehouse



The LifeHouse

📸 Images/logo courtesy of Share Portsmouth (publicly available)

29/06/2025

24/06/2025

and the Winner Is…..

Roy!

Congratulations on winning the first ever Panero’s Got Talent in Aid of LoungAid.

Thank you all for taking part and donating towards Friday Fridge.

17/06/2025

Friday Fridge (and Freddy) are very grateful to Panero Loungefor their tremendous support, what a great bunch of people.

11/04/2025

Tonight at Friday Fridge we served a meal almost entirely from ‘left over food‘ from our own church freezers, and it worked very well - so we’ll do it again soonish.

21/03/2025

It may (does) seem amazing but it’s 5 years since the first UK Covid lockdown, which means it’s now 5 years since Friday Fridge went “Full Time” (open every Friday, aside from one Christmas when the dates didn’t work out well), and that’s a great opportunity to give a massive thank you to the incredible heroes who enabled that then and have enabled it on every Friday since.

We owe a very big “Thank You” to Portsmouth City Council, in particular to councillors Suzy Horton, Steve Pitt and Chris Attwell for their unwavering and excellent support, and to the amazing Mark Sage for just making stuff happen.

We owe a huge thanks to Rev. Neil Smart of (at the time) St Jude’s Southsea, for his outstanding work in bending the ear of our bishop to keep the church (our venue) open for those Friday evenings (and only for those Friday evenings!) when all churches across the country were closed, and to the Bishop of Portsmouth for listening and responding so well.

The people we owe the most thanks to, and I’m running out of adequate superlatives now, are the Friday Fridge volunteers, who stepped up to not only keep this fantastic outreach open but to open it even more often. At a time when we had no idea what the risks were, when many people (not unreasonably) wouldn’t leave their house for fear of what was out there, they took that real risk and served their community and their God. Not fearlessly (definitely not fearlessly) but bravely despite that very real fear, because they knew that not only was the need still there but that need was greater than ever before. I really really can’t adequately express my overwhelming admiration and gratitude, I’m so utterly proud of them all.

Not one of them, to my knowledge, wears a cape and yet they are heroes from their heads to their toes and through to their cores.

04/03/2025

I’m pausing activity on FB, possibly for Lent, probably for ever.

09/12/2024

Hope into Action are delighted to once again be involved in supporting this much loved community event. There are many trees decorated by a variety of organisations and charities, please do pop in at some point over the weekend to take a look and enjoy the festivities! (You can find the Hope into Action Portsmouth tree at stop no. 17 on your Christmas Tree trail which includes hand-crafted decorations by some of our tenants).

09/12/2024

ARE YOU ABLE TO HELP?

Every item will make up a hamper for a family in need this year!

Please click on the link and scroll to the bottom of times you can donate
https://www.stmagscc.uk/hampers-of-hope

THANK YOU FOR BEING PART OF THIS VERY SPECIAL MINISTRY WHICH BLESSES SO MANY PEOPLE