By Oliver Morgan and Sabrina Aledda
Leon Aarts is a London-based former chef turned philanthropist who decided to set up in March a food charity called With Compassion. The London-based enterprise relies purely on cash and food donations, and provides nutritious, hot meals to anyone in need.
“Just think: you can not concentrate when you’re hungry, it impacts your mental health,” Aarts explained at the recent Hungry London event discussing food poverty at London Metropolitan University.
“If you need a meal and we have a meal, we will give it to you.”
According to the British Food Standards Agency, 8% of adults living in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are currently struggling with food insecurity – and one of Aarts’s core goals is to help them.
Aarts, who is originally from the Netherlands and worked with migrants in Calais, has been working with food his entire life – which is one reason he decided to use his culinary expertise to help people in need living in the capital.
His charity’s aim is to prepare nutritious meals from surplus food to be then distributed to various organisations, ranging from homeless hostels, food banks, nursing homes, schools and social centres.
Since its opening earlier this year, With Compassion has cooked nearly 550,000 meals in the first 10 months. With 20 to 30 people volunteering daily in rented kitchens, he believes he has made a real impact on thousands of lives in Greater London.
Such an organisation brings a much needed boost to critically affected people during such unstable and devastating times.
He says “What we lost is our common humanity; we forgot to look after each other.”
Aarts stresses the importance of cash donations, as a £10 donation would allow With Compassion to cook and deliver ten meals for hungry Londoners during this pandemic.
Leave a Reply