Kathy K.

I am a mum and a carer. I love reading books and cooking and, now my sons are older, I have the time to do these things. When you live in long-term poverty, you have to depend on services that are delivered with suspicion and disdain. They make you feel humiliated. The stereotyping of all poor people dehumanises them in the eyes of others. Despite health issues, I volunteer at the food bank when I can. It’s just a comfortable place to be and people use the cafe as somewhere to sit and wait for the food bank to open so I have been able to have a word with people and offer advice to them. I hope I can use my life experience to give moral support and encouragement along the way. It’s a focal point for a deprived area; I love it. This project is very important to me because doing something positive helps me deal with the negativity of the media. The things they say on TV about people on benefits are so toxic. It’s not nice to have your life degraded, devalued, and blamed for all the ills in society. We can measure ourselves in different terms. The only thing that seems to be valuable to society at the moment is paid work. What you earn is who you are, but that’s wrong. There’s more to life than that. We have to take a fresh look at society’s values.