Jewish Care volunteer, Rita Newmark has been presented with the prestigious Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award at the JVN Awards 2022, celebrating volunteers in the community. Rita was one of the founding members of our Meals on Wheels service in 1973 and has continued to volunteer for over 50 years.
Jewish Care also celebrated Finalists, Monique Cadji and Sally Caplan for the Volunteer of the Year Award, Rob Sher for the Young Volunteer of the Year Award, as well as Jewish Care’s Memory Way Café and Befriending Coordinators Teams for the Team of the Year Award.
Daniel Carmel-Brown, Jewish Care Chief Executive, says, “I want to congratulate Rita on behalf of everyone at Jewish Care on receiving this much-deserved award in recognition of the outstanding contribution she has made to the community by volunteering for over 50 years, since she and a small group of friends and dedicated volunteers began Meals on Wheels.
“Since then, Rita has continued to give her skills, time and expertise delivering meals, and doing so much more, to nurture and inspire many others to volunteer for what is today, Jewish Care’s Meals on Wheels service. Now providing 700 meals each week to 300 older people, it has been a lifeline to thousands of people over the years and continues to bring the community together across the generations. I also want to congratulate all of our finalists and thank all of our dedicated volunteers for all the amazing work that they do to support older people in our community.”
Jewish Care’s Meals on Wheels service connects and supports older, isolated people at home through Jewish Care with a kosher meal and a chat with a friendly volunteer, who can also check on their wellbeing.
In 1973, Rita’s friend, Helene Goswell recognised there was a need to support older members of the community through help from others in the form of hot meals. Rita was there from the start, cooking food from her kitchen, delivering soup and hot meals to people at home, as well as recruiting local volunteers. Rita became the Treasurer, buying food and containers, delivering hot soup and meals and recruiting more volunteers.
Together, they ensured the food was cooked, administered and delivered in Stepney for the older, vulnerable members of the Jewish community in the East End. They made meals in Redbridge for 10 years with The League of Jewish Women, eventually moving to Sinclair House, which became Jewish Care’s Redbridge Jewish Community Centre in 1997, and where the Meals on Wheels service expanded.
Throughout the recent lockdowns in the Covid-19 pandemic, Rita, together with her husband Leon, carried on delivering Meals on Wheels twice a week and on top of a local route in Redbridge, every Wednesday morning, Rita and Leon would pick up in excess of 50 frozen meals and deliver them to the centre in Bethnal Green.
At its peak, during lockdowns, Jewish Care’s Meals on Wheels service more than tripled to deliver kosher meals to over 320 people across Redbridge each week. Jewish Care chefs made, and our volunteers delivered over 125,000 Meals on Wheels.
Whether people have a small amount of time or a lot, anyone can help by volunteering with Meals on Wheels, as little or as much as they feel able to do, enabling them to contribute to the community in a meaningful way.
If you would like to find out more about volunteering with Meals on Wheels or any other part of Jewish Care, please contact volunteers@jcare.org or call 020 8922 2405.