Canuk to donate food items to Greenwich and Bexley Hospice on Christmas Day

CENTRAL Association of Nigerians in the UK (Canuk) officials will be handing out food items to the Greenwich and Bexley Hospice in Abbeywood in southeast London on Christmas Day as part of a cooperative agreement between the two bodies.

Founded in 1995, the Greenwich and Bexley Hospice is having to adapt to the changing demographics in its catchment area, meaning, it has to embrace Nigerian culture a lot more. This has meant that it has had to include food items such as jollof rice on its menu and needs to learn and understand the cultural concerns of its Nigerian residents.

To help with this reaching out to the Nigerian community, the hospice has teamed up with Canuk and as a first step, food items are being donated on Christmas Day. Canuk in conjunction with its member organisations the Association of Nigerian Charities UK and the Nigerian Community in Thamesmead & Abbeywood shall be handing the hospice packs of jollof rice, Nigerian Fanta and fruit on December 25.

Canuk chairman, Ayo Akinfe. said: "With the changing demographics in the area, more Nigerians are going to be coming to this hospice, so it is time we started to assist this that transition. As a token gesture, we shall deliver some food items to them on Christmas Day to show that we care about those not well enough to spend the day at home.

"This hospice caters for about 750 people but for now, only 14 of them are permanent residents and it is these in-house residents that we shall be taking care of on Christmas Day. Going forward, we shall be working with the hospice to reach out to the out-patient residents and maybe join the staff for home visits."

Simran Kaur, the Greenwich and Bexley Hospice community development and engagement manager, added: "We are delighted to be entering into this partnership with Canuk as there was a need to reach out to the Nigerian community. There are a lot of misconceptions out there that a hospice is a place where you just come to die and hopefully, working together, we will take on these myths and attract a lot more Nigerians to our hospice.

"We offer top class palliative care and think that the local Nigerian community needs to know this because if they do, I am sure a lot more of them will come here. Among other things, we have also entered into an exchange programme with the University College Hospital in Ibadan, whereby our nurses will go there for two weeks and their staff will come here for four weeks for extensive palliative care training."

According to Barbara Jika, Canuk's welfare secretary, as this programme expands, more and more Nigerians in need of palliative care will come forward. She added that at the moment, there is a bit of a social stigma attached to owning up to the fact that help is needed and as a result many Nigerians who should be in palliative care are not there.

Mrs Jika added: "In 2025, Canuk will be 20, so as part of our anniversary celebrations, we shall be mounting a campaign to urge our people to always seek appropriate medical care. This could be just medical check-ups, screening or palliative care but the one thing people should not do is sit at home doing nothing."

Ms Kaur added that moving forward, jollof rice shall be added to the main menu of the hospice restaurant as its seeks to become more inclusive. She pointed out that the whole idea is to make Nigerians, just like members of other ethnic minority communities feel at home in the hospice.