LDFP are delighted to welcome a guest contribution from Lunch Positive Project Coordinator Jim Stanford. Read on to find out more about the community connections being built at the Seahaven HIV Hub through facilitated peer support, friendship and cooking and sharing Good Food.
Lunch Positive is a local charity supporting people living with HIV in Sussex. We improve the health and wellbeing of people living with HIV through community and asset based activities, focused on financial disadvantage, health and wellbeing, combatting loneliness and social isolation.
Seahaven HIV Hub supports people with HIV in Lewes District experiencing multiple social and financial disadvantages. Service users experience poor physical & mental health, anticipated or internalised HIV stigma that are frequently barriers to accessing support.
The monthly HIV hub at Bishopstone provides a healthy light meal to members, advice and information, and facilitated peer-support.
“The main achievement of the Seahaven social remains overcoming social isolation in a supportive, peer-led setting”
‘Seahaven Social’ started at the end of 2022 at The Old Parcel Room community hub at Bishopstone Station. The HIV hub provides peer led community support for people living with HIV in the Lewes District. We offer a welcoming and inclusive safe space to meet others living with HIV, share friendship and peer support.
Our service users often have complex health issues, experience social isolation, and represent a wide range of demographics. Many service users are older people who live alone and our service users are frequently from other underrepresented and minority, often marginalised communities, such as LGBTQ, and women from minority ethnic groups.
As well as friendship and a lovely tea we often have other things happening. These range from a community food table to food parcels, from a volunteer barber to a cookery demonstration on the use of air fryers. Next month we have a cookery workshop on the topic of using up food ‘from the back of the cupboard and from the bottom of the fridge’; making soups, stir-fries and pasta sauces. The main achievement of the Seahaven social remains overcoming social isolation in a supportive, peer-led setting.
Contribution by Jim Stanford, Lunch Positive Project Coordinator.
To find out more about Lunch Positive, visit: Homepage – Lunch Positive
Lunch Positive has received funding from LDFP for food-based activities at the Seaford Hub. The team at LDFP are delighted to support this project, which gets to the heart of the power of food to connect communities and support people to overcome barriers to participation.