Georgie Docker,North Westand
Richard Stead,North West
Gary O’Donnell has been homeless for the last six months and is one of many people in Manchester facing the prospect of sleeping rough this Christmas.
While shoppers head home, laden with Christmas essentials, Gary is forced to take refuge in the doorway of Marks and Spencer on Market Street.
And when the shutters go down and the temperature drops, Gary told Radio Manchester that there was only one place he can reliably get food – Cold Hands Warm Hearts, a Manchester-based charity which provides warm food and essential items to rough sleepers.
“Without them, homeless people in Manchester would starve, because there’s no other food,” Gary said. “Without them I wouldn’t get fed – simple as”.
Since its foundation in 2021, volunteer-led charity Cold Hands Warm Hearts has provided home-cooked food, sleeping bags, dry clothing and more, for Manchester’s homeless.
But in June this year, the charity lost all of its supplies in a storage unit fire.
“Everything basically we owned, everything that allowed us to do what we’ve done for the last four years was gone,” charity co-founder Jamie Lilley recalled.
“It was coats, hats, gloves, sleeping bags – over 45 sleeping bags were lost,
“We probably had maybe 200 coats in our unit, all our essentials, our trolleys that we take around, all our equipment, our high vis jackets, our jumpers, our coats that that we take out for people,” he said.
After a successful fundraising campaign – Cold Hands Warm Hearts has rebuilt itself and is continuing to provide for Manchester’s homeless.
Radio Manchester joined volunteers at the charity during one of their Monday evening food handouts last week, to find out what the charity means to those who it helps.
Jordan Winstanley, 43, from Openshaw has been sleeping in a city centre car park – he told Radio Manchester it was the best place to get shelter during the cold winter months.
Despite this, he said the wind still blows through, leaving him to suffer.
“It gets so cold – to the point where you can’t sleep,” Jordan said.
“I’ve laid there for hours trying to sleep and in the end you just have to get up.
“You have to move – you can’t sleep, it’s just impossible to sleep when you’re cold.
Jordan, who had been given a new pair of thick socks by the charity said the volunteers do “more important work than a lot of people know”.
“To me, a new pair of socks isn’t just socks – it’s the difference between walking around squishing around and getting my feet dry,” he explained.
“If it wasn’t for the work that the charity volunteers do for us, a lot of us would go hungry, a lot of us wouldn’t get clothing that we need,” he added.
Like Gary, Jordan also relies on the charity for food.
On Monday last week, the evening menu was sandwiches, soup, sausage, chips and gravy, or cottage pie.
Natalie Quansah, 43, from Middleton is one of the volunteers who helped to cook and serve warm meals on behalf of Cold Hands Warm Hearts.
“The soup seems to have gone down a treat tonight,” she told Radio Manchester. “But it always does, I make a good soup.”
For Natalie though, the volunteering is about more than just the food itself.
“I enjoy coming, which probably sounds a little weird – but I do, because you get regular people who come every week and it’s nice to see them, and speak to them and see what’s been going on,” she said.
“This could happen to anyone – and people seem to think it couldn’t, but it could,” she added.
“And not everyone who comes is homeless, but they might be on hard times.
“We’re just here to offer a little bit of help and support, that’s all we can do.”