Darren McGarvey: every time you hand someone a food parcel you reduce a problem elsewhere in community

“An ominous sign of things to come,” he reflected as he attended the organisation’s tenth anniversary AGM at Pathhead Church this week.

The author and social commentator reflected on the increasing need for its role in what he billed “one of most difficult times in living memory.”

“While discussions at the AGM six years ago were as serious as life gets, I left with feeling of optimism,” he said, and that positive note continued as he reflected on the human cost of living in poverty.

“I think a lot of the crisis and difficulty we are in,” he said. “There is another story of how people rise to meet that challenge, often modestly and discreetly. They look for nothing but the sense of satisfaction that comes with altruism. That’s the perfect antidote to this perma-crisis.

“Poverty is an all encompassing awareness you are living week to week, month to month, not knowing how things will go in the weeks in front of you, That is no basis to plan your life, no basis or to protect your mental health. The tentacles of poverty reach into every part of your life every day.”

He spoke of the powerful impact when people reach out to help, but when we rise to the challenge we feel we have to have all the answers. Have I done enough?

“We constantly see best efforts resulting in what appears to be no progress for so much time, thought, energy to help simply tread water.

“But what happens to people being helped to tread water when that help is withdrawn? Your little acts of kindness reduce crime, prevent mental health breakdown, bring down pressure on housing. Every time you hand someone a parcel of food you reduce a problem elsewhere in the community at that moment in that day.

“If you are the kind of person who works or volunteers at a foodbank, donates time and money and items, or comes on a brisk Tuesday evening to sit through an AGM then you are already doing enough. You don’t need to have all the answers to every question. It isn’t your job to fix policing, housing and health service and radically reimagined a society that lifts people up rather than tears them down

“You are answering one of most profound questions a vulnerable person can ask - can you help me? Can you walk alongside me? Can I have something to eat?”