Help feed our NHS frontline workers

Kyriaki Pouangare is one of three directors of Fuel Our Frontline a not-for-profit company which is delivering food to doctors, nurses, and support workers such as cleaners – staff who are working long shifts to fight the coronavirus crisis.

Kyriaki, who graduated in architecture from the University of Brighton in 2014,  told her story to Architects’ Journal. Here’s an edited version:

“The pandemic has found me in life-changing circumstances. Having studied, worked and qualified as an architect in the UK, I decided to return back home to Cyprus.

I was previously working in a medium-sized architecture company in London. Having found myself now with a lot of free time I decided to do something worthwhile with it.

My partner, Michael Polak, who lives in London, texted me while I was detained in a hotel in Cyprus on mandatory quarantine for two weeks, as I had just arrived from the UK, and told me had a great idea. This is how this initiative started.

I realised our skills as architects could be employed to do a lot of good. I had previous experience creating websites and social media to raise awareness for causes, and that became my first task for this organisation.

Kyriaki Pouangare

A doctor at London's Royal Hospital receiving the donations of essential grocery packages

Within four days we had a team of volunteers from our social circle and began raising money. Early on, we made sure to include NHS staff in our team, primarily to ensure that our ideas were addressing the needs of the people we aimed at supporting and secondly to help us establish a network within the different hospitals.

It was the generosity and community spirit of Londoners and those who supported us from the rest of the country, who donated the money which enabled us to transform a good idea into a worthwhile initiative.

We are now providing basic items such as bread, butter, eggs, pasta, milk and honey to frontline staff. This is a very simple idea but, after hearing many accounts of healthcare professionals being unable to source these basic items as they are working long shifts and have little time to go out searching the empty supermarkets, we decided we could help.

We are in constant communication with NHS staff to ensure that we source what is needed. For example, we are now adding fruits to our typical packages following requests from NHS staff. We also adjust to circumstances. During Ramadan, for instance, we are providing dates for NHS staff fasting.

This is only possible because of the donations from private individuals and companies, through our GoFundMe platform and our website.

We have also established collaborations with designers who are donating half their proceeds to our cause. One of which is a fashion designer, Florence Bridge, who is creating hand-made masks and has managed to raise a considerable amount of money for our organisation.

We provide £1,500 worth of groceries every day, so we need more donations to ensure that we can run for the duration of this crisis.

What’s very important is to understand the people we aim to support, establishing communication channels and ensuring that we address their needs. We have introduced ambassadors to our organisation, mostly healthcare professionals who are there to advise us and keep us on point, as well as promoting what we do.

There are many initiatives that provide takeaway food to NHS staff. However, providing groceries addresses their needs better, by allowing them to share a number of meals with their families and also by limiting the spread of the virus by reducing the numbers of health workers who need to attend the shops.

I am also very pleased that our organisation provides for all workers in the NHS, not just doctors and nurses. We have made drops to the Ambulance Service and we also provide for district nurses who seem to be left behind even though they are vital for our healthcare services during the pandemic, supporting the most vulnerable amongst us.

Our ambition is to continue for the duration of the crisis, however long it may last. We are currently expecting to run until the end of summer, subject to funding.

At the moment we are making drops in London, Essex and Scotland. However, we want to secure more funds to be able to donate groceries across the UK, to areas that have been hit by the pandemic, now at the peak of the crisis.

Architects have very versatile set of skills. However, we don’t often involve ourselves outside our profession.

Fuel Our Frontline shows that our skills, such as problem solving and co-ordination, can be employed to do a lot of good.”