Splott is an area of Cardiff that is sometimes talked about in connection with poverty and deprivation. However volunteers at a local community centre are resisting this tag which has been placed on the area through poverty index charts and other data and pointing out the less talked about wealth that exists there.
Those who help out at Splott Community Volunteers include people who have had to deal with personal loss, mental health struggles, and the cost of living crisis and they have decided to give back to their community by serving food, providing warm clothes, and giving out food parcels. The group has been around for nine years and recently started seeing the number of people attending its weekly breakfast club increase.
For a donation of £4, or £1 for children up to 12 years old, people attending the community centre’s breakfast club on a Thursday receive a hot cooked breakfast and a bag of essential food items. Project manager at Splott Community Volunteers Lynne Thomas said that on Halloween this year volunteers served 100 breakfasts. For more Cardiff stories, sign up to our newsletter here.
Through helping others many of the volunteers said they have been able to help themselves. Holly Jewell, who is the youngest volunteer at Splott Community Volunteers, said her mental health was “really bad” before joining. “Basically I hadn’t slept all night and my dad was going to breakfast club to go and help,” said Holly, 25.
“I went along with him and I really enjoyed it so then I started doing it.” Before moving to its current home in Railway Street Splott Community Volunteers started out at The Old Library in Singleton Road. When the volunteer group did move Holly was responsible for painting a new mural in the children’s play area.
Holly said: “It has helped my mental health, not fully… but it has definitely made a difference and I am actually able to leave the house now so it gives me basically the courage to get out of the house and go and do something and I just love working with kids.” Ted Bush, 91, is the oldest volunteer at Splott Community Volunteers.
Reflecting on the time he decided to join he said: “A few years back when my wife passed away, feeling down and dejected and around the house, certain friends knocked the door and [asked]… would I become a volunteer down in Splott. I said: ‘Why not?’
“From that moment on it has been a Godsend to me. It has been a great help. There is something for me to do.” Ted used to help at Splott Community Volunteers by picking up food from shops and supermarkets that would make donations to the group.
Ted Bush started helping out at Splott Community Volunteers after his wife passed away
(Image: Ted Peskett)
On breakfast club days he can now be found helping out to serve hot drinks and sometimes playing a tune to people on his harmonica. Volunteers at the breakfast club are coming face to face with the impact of the high cost of living across Cardiff and some of them are finding themselves being affected by it too.
Ted said: “One of the things I do, living on my own… now the winter time has set in, for the first half of a day I will go out and catch the local bus, go into the middle of Cardiff, I’ll have cups of coffee in the Wetherspoons… I toddle back then for 2pm-3pm, then I don’t mind that I may have to put the central heating on but until then I have got to save. I could not possibly from 9am switch the central heating on.
“And I see other people on the bus not doing the same route as me but they are out and about for the first half of the day. You cannot be home unless you are really ill and I feel sorry for people that may be really ill. I will go out and try and cut my costs because it is very dear and then at 4pm I will put the luxury of central heating on in the house put the telly on and watch Hancock’s Half Hour.”
Speaking more generally about the impact that the breakfast club has on people’s lives, Ted, who has volunteered there for about four years, added: “Everybody who comes, they are talking to each other. We have a bit of fun… and everybody is happy for two to three hours of their life. Of course they will have a little moan but if you have shared it out it is not too bad.”
After generating thousands of pounds through a fundraising event at Moorland Park in 2015 Fred and Angela Bullard and Trisha Mardon set up the Splott Community Volunteers breakfast club. The initial idea was to just help homeless people but the breakfast club is now open to everybody.
Fred Bullard was one of the people to first set up Splott Community Volunteers
(Image: Ted Peskett)
On the impact of the cost of living in the area Fred said: “Put it this way, if somebody came in through our door today and they didn’t have any money we wouldn’t turn them away… we know who is struggling financially. Some of them they are struggling literally to raise £4 for a breakfast.”
Splott Community Volunteers run a number of different sessions for free including digital skills sessions, a knitting group called knit and natter, and a worry club which invites anyone to drop in for a hot drink and share whatever is on their mind. More recently Splott Community Volunteers won the volunteer group of the year award at the Cardiff Volunteer Awards 2024.
Project manager Lynne said she was “thrilled” for the volunteers who she called superstars for the work they do. At this time of year Lynne said they are starting to see some people coming in to keep warm. To help meet the demand for items like thermal socks, gloves, and scarves, Splott Community Volunteers has started selling more winter items at its charity shop.
Lynne said: “You can have a pair of really good winter boots for £3 and people like to buy things because they feel like it is less of a charity handout but we do have people walk through the door who don’t have anything.” She pointed out that the group also has a pet foodbank at its base now, adding: “We have had a few people come who have been so emotional because they have been unable to feed their pets or they are scrimping on their own food to feed their pets.”
Marilyn Maunder, 82, runs the charity shop at Splott Community Volunteers. She said retiring from her day job years ago was “awful” after decades of running two newsagents in Cardiff with her husband. When they sold their last shop Marilyn said they were out of the premises within six weeks.
Marilyn Maunder, 82, runs the charity shop at Splott Community Volunteers
(Image: Ted Peskett)
“There was no winding down,” she said. “It was from full-on to nothing. Well I thought I would go crazy if I had to do this all of the time.” Marilyn eventually managed to find work at another charity shop for some time before eventually deciding to help out at Splott Community Volunteers.
After her husband died she said running the charity shop there has helped her “hugely”. She added: “I need to be busy and especially since my husband died because I think you have got to fill your time and not sit at home moping about it because I was very fortunate.
“We had 60 years of marriage so I have been very lucky.” Jeanette Edwards is another volunteer at the site and she runs the bakery stall at the breakfast club. After her husband died a friend asked her if she would like to help out at Splott Community Volunteers.
Jeanette said: “For me it fulfils a need.” She added helping out with her fellow volunteers is one of a number of things, including teaching tai chi, that she does now to keep occupied. Jeanette added: “If I am grieving it is for me living on my own now.
Jeanette Edwards runs the bakery stall
(Image: Ted Peskett)
“I go out all of the time. I go out every morning and do something. I needed this.” Lynne said that since she started working at Splott Community Volunteers in November 2023 she has seen the number of service users coming in on a Thursday increase from an average of about 45 people to about 65.
During some weeks they see about 70 people coming in. However Lynne said coming in for breakfast club or the other sessions is about more than just survival. She added: “It is fun down here in Splott and fun doesn’t get enough credit.
“Just because we live in an area where there is food poverty and there is fuel poverty it doesn’t mean that it has to define us. Splott is so often talked about in negative terms.
“It is prefixed with the word ‘deprived’ and it drives me up the wall because you walk down the street and you might see people who don’t have very much [but] it doesn’t mean that they are poor in every aspect of their life. We are rich in Splott in a lot of aspects.
Project manager Lynne Thomas
(Image: Ted Peskett)
“That community spirit, the neighbourliness, the looking after each other, the bringing the joy, the pitching in and getting things done – I think we are mega-rich in those terms.” For more information about the work Splott Community Volunteers does and for information on the sessions they have on visit their website at splottcommunityvolunteers.co.uk.