Leftover lunches not left to waste

Sometimes it’s hard to guess how many mouths we will need to feed when we host a lunch symposium at a large medical conference. Attendance varies, and sometimes there are other food options for attendees. Such was the case at Charing Cross this year in London.

After a well-attended lunchtime symposium, Declan Dunphy, regional manager for Peripheral Intervention in the UK, noticed that there were a large number of lunches left as most of the physicians had already grabbed some lunch prior to attending the symposium. So Declan and Shirley Symes, Peripheral Intervention EMEA sales and market manager, started offering the leftover lunch bags to our colleagues working the Cook booth. But there were still a LOT of lunches left. Declan came up with the idea to look for a charity that may benefit from the donation of the lunch bags.

After carefully looking through the various very well deserving charities, Declan found one near the convention centre where our conference was hosted. So with lunch bags once again in hand, a brigade of Cookies went to the front door of Olympia London conference centre to meet the charity representatives. After a short while, two tall gentlemen appeared before us, Ken and Vincent.

Ken and Vincent were volunteers from the St. Cuthbert’s Centre, which is a registered charity relying on donations for funding and volunteers to staff their programs. When we asked them where they had parked, they just replied: “Oh, we walked“.

With the number of lunch bags in mind, Declan asked: “Are there any other volunteers arriving to help?”

“No, it’s just us”, both Ken and Vincent replied. “It’s ok, we’ve got a bag”, and they popped out two medium-sized bags. We all looked at each other, puzzled.

Shirley offered, “Why don’t we get you a taxi?”

Both Ken and Vincent replied: “No it’s fine, the centre is only around the corner”. So they started to load the bags. It soon became clear this was not going to work. There were just too many lunches for them to carry. At this point, Shirley turns to me and says decisively, “Grab some bags, Neil, we’re walking”. So Declan, Shirley, and I grabbed as many lunch bags as we could hold and set out on our little adventure.

After about 10 minutes of walking, we asked Ken and Vincent, “So how far around the corner is the centre?”

Ken replied, “Oh, it’s just down the road”, and on we walked.

Another 10 minutes pass as we walk, and all this time Ken is having slight trouser malfunctions. Since he did not have a belt, he kept losing his trousers. He was struggling along; bags in one hand and trousers waistband in the other.

Finally we arrived at a very quaint little church. And when we saw what St. Cuthberts is all about, we knew it was worth the walk.

St. Cuthberts runs a day centre for people who are rough sleepers, or who are homeless, unemployed, with mental health problems, or who are struggling with substance misuse. They also give advice on housing, offer free showers and laundry service; and they have a clothing store. There is low-cost breakfast and lunch available on weekdays. On average they provide around 60 to 70 meals a day.

It was also really nice to see the photos on the walls of the day trips that St. Cuthberts had organised for the patrons of the day centre. It warmed our hearts to see such a fantastic service giving so much help to the local community that is so desperately in need of this help. We were glad we could contribute, even if it was in the smallest way.