What is the vision of your Organisation?
Stripey Stork is a baby bank who collects and redistributes baby and children’s items to families in Surrey and Croydon who are experiencing hardship, ensuring they have the essentials they need.
Why has your Organisation signed the ‘End Poverty Pledge’?
At Stripey Stork we see the reality of poverty every day through the referrals we receive. Families across Surrey are struggling to meet their children’s most basic needs, and we believe that no child should have to start life at a disadvantage because of financial hardship. That’s why we’re proud to sign the End Poverty Pledge, committing to play our part in working towards a Surrey that is poverty-free.
What examples can you give of your Organisation putting the ‘End Poverty Pledge’ into practice?
Our Head of Service was a participant in the Poverty Truth Commission, bringing first-hand insight into how poverty affects families and how services can be improved.
Our entire staff team has undertaken Poverty Awareness training with Good Company, helping us better understand the challenges people face and how to respond with dignity and respect.
We have established a Lived Experience Action Group (LEAG) to ensure that families with direct experience of the issues behind our referrals have a say in shaping our services. In addition, our Advisory Panel includes members with lived experience, ensuring that the voices of those who know poverty best are always part of our decision-making.
We are constantly reviewing and adapting our support based on the needs of families, working closely with our referral partners to ensure our services remain relevant and has impact.
We share best practice and insights with the wider sector / partners in the region more to foster greater understanding of the realities of families living in poverty.
We have become more focused on supporting partners, in particular schools, flexibly to make sure our service is as open access as possible for families who need it.
We take practical steps to support our local economy and reduce financial pressures on small businesses, including using local small businesses whenever we need to commission paid work, paying invoices promptly, never asking micro businesses to donate raffle prizes or items for families, using our platform to promote small local businesses we like working with and recommending them whenever we can.
What would you hope to be able to do more of in the longer term?
We will continue to encourage other local organisations to join us in taking meaningful action to build a county of Surrey where no child’s future is limited by financial hardship.
Continue to support schools to think of innovative ways of supporting families in financial hardship, such as through preloved uniform stock and awareness of support available to them.
“One of the clearest learnings from the PTC was that when someone has had a good experience of getting help, it can start to unpick some of the stigma around getting support, and send the message that we’re in this together.”