We have noticed many companies offering discount, freebies and support to our wonderful NHS front line staff recently, particularly in hospitals. In Hamilton, we do not have any major hospitals… but we do have numerous care homes, caring for our elderly and most vulnerable people. The service provided by these care heroes is essential to keeping the elderly and vulnerable in our community comfortable, especially during these times of hardship. Most of these institutions are working a minimum of twelve hour shifts, dealing with staff shortages, dealing with the lack of provisions and PPE. Some care homes cater for staff by giving them subsidised meals during their shifts – but sadly, staff has been sacrificing these recently because of the drop in provisions.

It is our intention to open our kitchen from Monday on wards to feed the staff of six local Hamilton care homes providing them with hot/cold snacks, soups, food to grab quickly on shift during breaks – or even a meal they can take home for after their shift when it’s too late to cook, shelves are empty and takeaways closed. We intend to do this on a DAILY BASIS until the crisis is over.

We wish we could fund this solely ourselves – but we need your help. We intend to help fund this through this crowdfunding page. We are not asking for large donations - only what people can afford at the moment and EVERY amount will help. No funds will come to our establishment whatsoever; only to buy ingredients to cook for feeding the staff. If at the end there is a surplus of cash, money will be divided between the institutions for them to use as they need most.

Here at Junkyard, we are now entering our third week of COVID-19 isolation and we are doing our best to maintain the guidelines set by the Government – our staff are still getting paid (the majority of our direct debits have been cancelled to enable us to continue this). As it stands, we are unsure whether we will come out the other side of this. We are in a situation that is shared by many; it is not sympathy we are after. Rather than just fizzle out, we would rather go out with a bang, upholding our reputation for supporting Hamilton and the community spirit we all share.

Although we know many in our community are under extreme hardships at the moment we also believe we have an inner strength which we want to utilise. We want to offer a helping hand to those who are either less fortunate, or those who are sacrificing their lives in order to help others.

We hope you will support up in this venture and give a little back to the Hamilton Heroes who are right on our doorsteps. Thank you – love and safety to you all.

The Junkyard Team x