First Love Foundation
Charity of the Month
About First Love Foundation
First Love Foundation are a registered poverty-tackling charity based in Tower Hamlets. They’ve spent the past 11 years pioneering and embedding an innovative alternative to the way poverty is tackled. They have helped thousands of people facing crisis to get their lives back on track. Their holistic model of support has been cited by the APPG on Hunger and Poverty (2014) as the most effective in tackling poverty anywhere in the UK. Their AQS-accredited service offers rapid, trauma-informed crisis intervention, wraparound support, welfare rights advice and advocacy to resolve the crisis and help carve a path to sustainable living.
First Love Foundation help the hardest-to-reach, most marginalised people in our community – those who have given up hope. Through person-centred, meticulous case management, our front-line team capture the underlying issues of each client’s crisis. Through our deep insights, they are able to shine a light on where the system is failing the most vulnerable in society.
The people they help are from diverse backgrounds, including BAME, women fleeing domestic abuse, people with disabilities, elderly and isolated people, and low-income white households. One key factor that unites these diverse groups is the overwhelming feeling of being marginalised, left to face their crisis alone, and not knowing who to turn to for help. They dedicate our work to throwing them a lifeline. With your help, they can work with victims to carve a meaningful path forward and start to love life once again. Take a look at their donation page here.
Their Challenges
Their Achievements / Goals
The need for their services increased by 900% in the face of the pandemic. From 2015 to 2018 they secured over £4.2million in arrears and uplift payments by tenaciously supporting clients to access their correct benefit entitlements. Over the past year they have helped over 1,400 people out of crisis. Their work impacts on people from diverse backgrounds. Many are single maternal-led households, frequently with domestic abuse as one of the driving issues of their crisis. First Love Foundation also supports a significant number of single males over 40, and an increasing number of pensioners who have been unable to access their state pension. A high percentage of the people they support suffer with mental illness and extreme isolation.
First Love Foundation’s Heroes are those people who have a unique story to tell. These are the extraordinary individuals that they have had the opportunity to work with, whether as a user of our service, an organisational partner or overall supporter. They continue to work with more of these people and continue to be amazed and humbled by the impact we have. The First Love Foundation Hero stories live on to inspire and guide all the work that we do. Find out all about their stories here.
