Aim

MY SISTER’S KITCHEN will provide a safe space for women & girls in crisis, experiencing abuse, homelessness, hunger and mental health issues

Please help us to raise money to expand our amazing project, My Sister’s Kitchen to alleviate the multiple and complex barriers faced by vulnerable women and girls in Sunderland. FISCUS is a registered charity providing advice & crisis support to some of the most vulnerable people, families children & young people in Sunderland.  

Our small team of staff and volunteers support 4000+ people every year by providing welfare benefits advice, debt advice and crisis support including:

o   Emergency food, hygiene & period products via our Community Food Bank 

o   Evening Warm Welcome Space! 

o   Baby Bank 

o   Community Clothes Bank

Our crisis support is delivered in a safe, non-judgmental and confidential community environment to ensure people, families, children and young people have access to food, clothing and necessities often taken for granted but what many families cannot afford.  

Our small team of Crisis Advice Workers provide outreach support at over 20 foodbanks in Sunderland and Newcastle every week. Our Community building, the Coop Centre, along with the 20 Community Foodbanks where we outreach, are often a first place of contact and reaching out for help for women and girls facing multiple and complex difficulties.

Women and girls and their children should not have to be afraid or endure unsafe situations and housing conditions; they should not have to go without food, without sanitary ands hygiene items or a warm home or place of their own. Women and girls and their children should not be hungry, or cold or homeless.  Women and girls and their children should have access to appropriate and warm clothing and shoes and enough personal essential items such as shower gel, deodorant, period items, socks and underwear. Please HELP US to ensure that NO WOMAN or GIRL SHOULD BE ALONE when struggling with abuse, homelessness, mental health issues, food insecurity, discrimination, cold and unfit homes and lack of food, clothing and basic essentials.

Via a grant and a loan, we have so far raised an amazing £44,000 capital funding to create a new My Sister’s Kitchen that will replace our existing small community kitchen.  Our new 'My Sister's Kitchen' will provide a brand new, bigger safe space, crisis support, emergency essentials, training, volunteering and employability skills for vulnerable women and girls. We will also run weekly Batch Cooking on a Budget Workshops where participants can learn to batch cook and freeze meals.

My Sister's (new) Kitchen will be sited at the front of our community building, the Coop Centre to make it more accessible.  We now need to raise a further £20,640 for a Community Cook & Trainer (20 hpw) and funding for a Fareshare surplus food subscription and batch cooking ingredients.  Crowdfunding will enable My Sister's Kitchen to get up and running and provide much needed support for vulnerable women and girls.   Our new Women & Girls Community Projects Development Worker will support the project and provide crisis support, access to food parcels, clothing, essentials and volunteering and employability opportunities.  A Community Cook will deliver batch cooking and healthy eating on a budget cookery classes and cook at home meal boxes (think Hello Fresh, Gousto) with online cooking support that use seasonal and affordable ingredients. 

Our small team of staff and volunteers have seen women and girls suffer trauma, discrimination, violence, homelessness or fleeing their homes with nothing, lack of any family or friends, feeling despair and hopelessness, and other awful, unimaginable situations that we cannot tell you about.  With your support, in the first year, we aim to help over 120+ women and teenage girls get back on track, to a safe space with support and access to essentials that most of us take for granted.  We aim to build confidence and self-esteem and empower women and girls to take back control of their lives and rebuild positive futures.

My Sister’s Kitchen will also provide a warm space and access to a hot meal, refreshments, warm clothing, food parcels, fuel vouchers and essentials for any women self-presenting or referred.  As well as providing much needed support and access to advice and crisis services, My Sister’s Kitchen would also benefit the wider community. By trading several hours a day, the kitchen would be staffed mainly by volunteers working alongside the Community Cook, and provide a welcoming community deli-kitchen for local people.  My Sister’s Kitchen will also provide a new home to our existing warm space that provides hot meals, social activities and crisis support to older people, young people and families experiencing loneliness and hardship. including the vulnerable groups we currently support.   

My Sister’s Kitchen will provide volunteer and employability training opportunities for women and teenage girls including young girls age 16 – 25 who have been in prison, women fleeing abuse, women on probation and girls who have left the care system or are still ‘looked after’ by the local authority but living independently and often struggling and experiencing financial hardship along with other barriers.  My Sister’s Kitchen will provide a safe, welcoming and inclusive space for ALL women and girls to learn to cook on a budget, prepare food, cook from scratch and batch cook to save money whilst creating nutritious low-cost meals that can be stored or frozen to help them make ends meet.

We will also introducing a focus on wellbeing including Daily Mile exercise, coupled  with crisis support and access to food & essentials, volunteering and employability skills, My Sister's Kitchen aims to make a real, positive impact on the lives of vulnerable women and girls in Sunderland.

In 2025, an estimated 2.2 million women experienced domestic abuse across England and Wales, with local data from Sunderland City Council indicating that domestic abuse remains a significant local issue. Rising Police Incidents:  According to strategies published by the Sunderland Domestic Abuse and VAWG Executive Board, Northumbria Police previously reported a 6.3% increase in domestic abuse incidents force-wide, with Sunderland alone experiencing a 9.3% surge in recent reporting periods. Impact on Families: Of the recorded incidents in the area, 13.7% involved children, and there were thousands of incidents categorized as high-risk or requiring Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC).

Housing Need: Approximately 238 homeless applications in Sunderland were due to domestic abuse in a single reporting year, with hundreds more indicating they were at risk.

National Prevalence

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that:

• Prevalence by Sex: An estimated 2.2 million females (9.1% of the female population) aged 16 and over experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2025.
• Lifelong Experience: Across England and Wales, an estimated 30.3% of women have experienced domestic abuse since the age of 16.
• Under-reporting: It is estimated that fewer than 1 in 5 victims of partner abuse in the last year reported the abuse to the police

Our ‘new’ My Sister’s Kitchen will:

• Support over 150+ vulnerable women and girls to make ends meet, stay safe and build positive futures in the first year
• Provide volunteering & training opportunities: Barista Training, Cooking, Hospitality and Customer Service – all areas where there are available jobs often paid above national minimum wage
• Provide emergency and crisis support and home cooked hot meals and refreshments for women and girls accessing My Sister’s Kitchen
• Reduce stigma, despair, loneliness, feelings of hopelessness
• Improve metal health and feelings of well being among vulnerable women and girls
• Increase awareness of where to go for help and support
• Build confidence, self-esteem, aspirations, motivation and routes to emergency and crisis support, friendship and professional specialist support for vulnerable women and girls 
• Create training opportunities for women and girls to prepare and cook low cost & healthy meals using fruit & vegetables from our community garden and Fare Share 'rescued' food
• Employ a pt Community Cook to work alongside our volunteers 20 hpw
• Teach women and girls ‘old-fashioned’ home economics & independent living skills & cookery classes
• Create a new community café trading 4-5 hours per day Monday - Friday (and eventually weekends) 
• Provide a new Women & Girls food bank, clothing and essentials donation point
• Signposting and building confidence among women and girls to know where they and their family can get help in a crisis or emergency or unsafe situation
• Generate a small trading income to raise money to cover the cost of running My Sister’s Kitchen to support vulnerable women and girls facing trauma and crisis in Sunderland
• Encourage the Spread of Community KINDNESS towards vulnerable women and girls and anyone who is in need of support

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 14th October 2026 at 8:44pm