Good Neighbours: Lallana Joins Red Neighbours to Help Feed Liverpool Hungry

The Red Neighbour Program was joined by Adam Lallana this past week as they delivered food to the North Liverpool Foodbank. During the visit, the midfielder was able to tour the facilities as well as to learn from the volunteers and workers about how the program works.

Lallana left the event considering the plight of so many in Liverpool. He had this to say of his experience:

“It’s extremely saddening to realise that foodbanks are part of everyday life for many local people, but also very humbling to see the massive contribution made by LFC fans each week. Please keep the donations coming, even if it’s just a couple of tins each game. Our fans have already helped thousands of local people and this season we can help thousands more.”

The visit helps to highlight the season-long program set up by the club and Red Neighbours, collecting canned goods at each home game. Donation stands are available for fans making the trip to Anfield on match day at Anfield Road next to the family park and at the LFC Anfield superstore. Fan donations to the program helped to get nearly 1,800 meals to hungry Liverpool families.

Food insecurity is an issue that faces many in working class communities like Liverpool. And I am incredibly proud of the club for doing something immediate and tangible to address such issues. I highly recommend working through local means to donate to your county or city’s foodbank and, perhaps, it might be an interesting project for members of local LFC supporters groups to create an effort by which members can collect canned goods at match viewings to donate to their local group.

I would also recommend people to advocate for ways to address systemic poverty and hunger. I am reminded of these tremendous words from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech, “The Church at the Frontier of Racial Tension,” in which he speaks about the contradiction between the presumption of scarcity in an economic system that actually prioritizes that scarcity over the moral good of feeding the hungry:

“...and I started thinking about the fact that in our country we spend more than a million dollars a day to store surplus foods. I found myself saying, I know where we can store that food free of charge, in the wrinkled stomachs of the hundreds and millions of people who go to bed hungry tonight.”

Systemic hunger and poverty do not have to be inevitable results of an economic system. Work like providing donations to foodbanks is a phenomenal way to provide stopgap measures on the way to hopefully finding lasting solutions to these problems. Kudos to the club for doing their part to ensure that members of their community in need do not struggle alone.