Helping those in need across our community of Great Yarmouth

  • Pathway welcomes and cares for everyone locally
  • Providing two key welfare services, our free cafe & support centre and our Yarmouth & Magdalen food bank
  • We need your help through making much-appreciated donations, offering to volunteer and gifting foodstuffs and essential items

The good news of Pathway…

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Meals provided in our cafe in the last 12 months
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Food bank parcels distributed in 2022
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different families in poverty benefitted from our help
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When Pathway started serving Great Yarmouth

Welcome

Building community and loving our neighbour is at the heart of Pathway, an independent registered charity, born out of a church response to the local community need in the Great Yarmouth parish.

Unconditional care and help for those who need us

An independent charity, we freely support everyone as best we can.

Pathway is all about a local community that helps itself

As a neighbourhood, we are pulling together, being good samaritans.

Three key welfare services run each and every week

A free café offering a hot meal for all, hot brunch with activities and a food bank.

Dedicated volunteers are at the heart of what we do

We have a wonderful team of committed, welltrained volunteers.

Please support us with your time or donations

We hope you will be able to give generously to our vital cause.

A huge thank you to all our funders and supporters

Pathway makes a huge difference in people’s lives in our community.

Building community and loving our neighbour is at the heart of what we do. An independent registered charity and born out of a church response to the local community need in the Great Yarmouth parish, Pathway offers three free welfare services. Our mission is to offer a high quality Café & Support Centre in our Admiralty Road base, off South Quay, and our Trussell Trust-partnered Food Bank, distributing both from our Great Yarmouth centre and also in Gorleston (from St Mary Magdalene Church NR31 7BZ). Our services are accessible to all.

We strive for excellence in our charitable activities and to provide an environment that is warm, welcoming, non-judgemental and free from discrimination. We rely on the generosity and support of volunteers, donors, supporters and other organisations to enable Pathway to deliver our much-needed services in our local community.

Alongside our professional staff our Project Manager, Support Officer and Chef, we have a core team of trained volunteers to ensure a safe and welcoming atmosphere whenever we are open and operating. Serving everyone, irrespective of their beliefs or background, we exist solely to provide sustenance and comfort to those in need.

Run as a separate, independent charity, overseen by a board of trustees, Pathway was originally developed as community outreach from the Church of England Parish of Great Yarmouth and continues to be closely supported by their three compassionate congregations. Whilst we do not expect our volunteers to be Christians or of any particular faith, we do ask for all our team to respect our project’s core Christian values and act in a sympathetic, appropriate manner when working with us.

Just a few of Pathway’s welcoming faces

Jennifer King
Jennifer KingPathway Manager
Pam and Sue
Pam and SueSupport Co-ordinators
Revd Ashley Hines
Revd Ashley HinesTrustee and Pastoral Lead
Revd Simon Ward
Revd Simon WardChair of Trustees

Pathway Cafe & Support Centre

The original and ongoing service we offer our local community, is our Pathway café and support centre, where anyone can visit our Minster Mission base without appointment or referral on every Monday and Friday at 11.45am for a midday communal meal. What we offer all our visitors is a hearty nutritious meal, along with soup to start, dessert and refreshments. We also offer takeaway hot meals to those we decide they would rather not eat in. Alongside the meal, we have regular pastoral support for anyone and often have external agencies and partnership charities in house to work with clients who require their services.On their first visit to us, we ask our clients for their contact details to register them and subsequently we record their name on each attendance so we can understand the frequency of their need and have a record of meals served for fundraising purposes. All data collected is kept in line with GDPR and our data protection policies.

Every Wednesday we are open 10am – 12 noon for hot brunch and activities. This is an opportunity for a more relaxed atmosphere, around enjoying food, socialising and learning new skills. As with our meal provision, this service is open to all.We are fortunate to receive much-appreciated donations of surplus food and other products from local retailers and supermarkets. This food and drink is mostly close to ‘best-before’ dates and which the donor businesses wish to see put to wholesome, sustainable use, rather than destined for wasteful landfill.

We are also a regular drop-off point for FareShare, the national food redistribution charity, which provides us with bulk catering ingredients for our café meals. If you or someone you know would enjoy a visit to our free cafe and support centre, our doors open to all at 11.45 Mondays and Fridays (please note public holidays can affect opening times).

The second and newest part of our service is the Yarmouth & Magdalen Food Bank providing a weekly service to help those in crisis. This emergency provision is open on Thursday mornings at our Admiralty Road base from 10am – 12 noon for Great Yarmouth NR30 postcode residents and in Gorleston NR31 7** or 8** postcode residents on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings from 9.30 – 11.30am at St Mary Magdalene Church in Magdalen Square NR31 7BZ (accessed via the Fastolff Avenue rear entrance).

Our food bank services are run by our trained team of support officers and welfare staff, most of whom are dedicated volunteers. Pathway is supported by The Trussell Trust, which advises and facilitates some 1,200 emergency food banks across the UK. Having opened in early 2022, our food bank receives referrals from a local network of professionals within third party agencies and organisations such as social services, GPs and health workers, police officers, church leaders or charity fieldworkers. As a means-tested service, visitors cannot just turn up unexpectedly and ask for a food parcel, we operate within strict guidelines to ensure we only give the most appropriate support to the widest number of properly-assessed, vulnerable individuals and families. You can find out more of what a Trussell Trust food parcel entails and further background information about the Yarmouth & Magdalen food bank here on the Trussell Trust website.

Our local referrals are vital in ensuring we meet those in need, weekly interviews helping us to understand their particular circumstances and individual needs. When we meet with clients, it is not just providing them with essential provisions, we also discuss their situations and help make recommendations as well as signposting them to partner agencies, with the aim of resolving the crises they face. It is shocking that in the UK right now, more than 14 million people are living below the poverty line. At Pathway we want to help those suffering in need locally, right here here in our community among us. So let’s make a difference together in our community.

If you or someone you know live in the Great Yarmouth and Magdalen area and need the help of our food bank, please first try to contact a local professional agency such as your doctor, the council, social services etc to get a referral. If a referral proves impossible to obtain, please do telephone or email us through the contact details below and we will do all we can to help.