At the height of the pandemic, Christ Church Warwick was making about 3,500 meals a week for needy people in the community.

After the health crisis abated, it dropped production down to 690 meals per week, but the demand for help did not go away.

In fact, with the cost of food and rent escalating on the island in the past five years, it is looking at expanding its meal assistance back to near pandemic levels.

The church delivers meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays but also sees 50 to 60 walk-ins on those days.

“There are people having to choose between eating and paying for something else like medication or their electricity bill,” programme co-ordinator David Thompson said.

Christ Church Warwick’s new minister, the Reverend Martin Fair, got a first-hand look at Bermuda’s high cost of living when he went to the grocery store for the first time.

He and his wife, Elaine, had just moved to the island from Scotland.

“A bag of carrots was $6,” Mr Fair said. “Back home that same bag was 46 pence [about 60 cents]. I said to my wife, Elaine, one of us is going to need a defibrillator machine, because my heart just stopped.”

Mr Fair worked as a youth minister at the church years ago but returned to Scotland in 1991.

The feeding programme was one of the things that drew Mr Fair back to the island.

“A church should not be a country club where people go on Sundays, then go about their business as per normal the rest of the week,” he said. “What happens Monday to Friday, also interests me.”

He felt that as a Christian it was his duty to do what he could to help.

“This is not a choice,” he said. “We feel called to meet people where they are and where the need is greatest to serve.”

He said people sometimes think they have organised a programme like this one to lure more people into the church.

“That is the last thing we are thinking about,” Mr Fair said. “There is so much need. People are literally trying to put food on their own tables.”

The feeding programme sprang out of another project the church started 15 years ago: Loads of Love, offering people without homes the chance to shower and wash their clothes.

“While people were waiting for their clothes to wash, we thought we would give them breakfast,” Mr Thompson said.

During the pandemic, the food side of things ramped up dramatically.

One volunteer told The Royal Gazette that when Covid-19 started, the church was given a mandate to cook 28 meals.

“We wondered who we would give those to,” she said.

Finding clients was no issue at all. People in need of help kept on coming.

Some of the clients were people who had lost their jobs because of the shutdown.

“The hotels were closed so they were not working,” Mr Thompson said. “The airports were also closed so the foreign hotel workers could not leave.”

Others were people who had already lived in the margins of society, and now were absolutely desperate.

The global health crisis eventually came to an end but the need for help has not gone away.

“We did not stop handing out free meals when Covid-19 ended for a simple reason,” Mr Thompson said. “There was just too much need.”

The church provides meals for the homeless, needy families, seniors and people in care homes. It also takes meals to students in two schools.

“School principals contacted us and asked if we could provide a meal for some of the students,” Mr Thompson said. “They were seeing children coming to school who had not had breakfast and did not have any lunch.”

He would like nothing better than for the programme to one day no longer be needed, but so far that has not happened.

“It shows you that there was always a problem. Covid-19 only brought it to the surface,” volunteer Gillian Bosch de Noya said.

Meals are cooked in the church’s industrial kitchen. It has freezers, a storage facility and an eight-burner stove.

Volunteers say the meals are tasty. Typically, there is a choice of fish, chicken, pasta or cottage pie, a vegetable and a dessert.

“The chicken is particularly popular,” Mr Thompson said.

Volunteer co-ordinator Chris Garland said the biggest challenge to running the food service is maintaining consistency of donations and volunteer time.

Some of the regular helpers are from the Christ Church Warwick congregation, while others come from other churches or no church at all.

Ms Bosch de Noya has been volunteering since the project’s earliest days.

“Unfortunately, I am a volunteer from afar now, because I had a stroke,” she said.

She can no longer drive, but gets her grandson to bring her to the church from Hamilton Parish.

“It is not easy, but this is where I want to be,” she said.

Organisers have seen a decline in corporate giving.

“At the beginning of Covid-19, corporates recognised the need in the community,” Mr Thompson said. “We received a lot of publicity. As things settled down, however, there were many charities vying for money. The giving has slowed down; however, we are heavily supported by Liberty Mutual.”

The company not only donates funds, but also sends volunteers once a month to help in the kitchen.

• For more information, e-mail christchurch@logic.bm