Rich Smith is Feed The Hungry UK’s longest serving member of staff, and has seen the organisation grow from small beginnings. He reflects on the partnerships that have transformed the charity over the last 21 years.
Feed The Hungry is now in its 21st year as a registered charity in the UK, and I’ve had the privilege of seeing the charity grow from a small outfit, to an organisation that is now impacting thousands of lives around the world every day.
Small Beginnings
Like most charities, Feed The Hungry UK came from small beginnings. It was incorporated in 2005 and had spent its first few years with a very small setup, administered by a few dedicated volunteers.
In 2010, with help from FTH USA, Gwyn Williams was taken on as the Project Manager. At that stage, it was very much ‘one man and his dog’ (the dog was called ‘Mimi’), and Gwyn ran the charity from his dining room in a small village in Leicestershire. He very quickly realised that the best way to grow a charity was through partnership with organisations and individuals. Through a connection with a local church, Gwyn was given low-cost office and warehousing space in Leicester.
A megaphone in a time of need
In 2013, Feed The Hungry was given a new public stage through a partnership with Premier Christian Radio. This coincided with a civil war breaking out in South Sudan, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing into neighbouring countries. The UN created refugee settlements in Uganda to help those escaping the conflict, and Feed The Hungry worked alongside the UN and the World Food Programme to provide regular meals in the schools in two refugee settlements, collectively feeding over 50,000 young people each school day. In support, Premier Radio ran campaigns to help feed these children.
On several occasions, we took radio presenters out to Uganda to see what was happening on the ground, and to capture stories and video. The response from Premier’s listeners was incredible. As a result, Feed The Hungry grew significantly. We were still a small team but suddenly other organisations started taking an interest. As Gwyn put it, we were “punching above our weight”.
Rice Meal Packing
Through a relationship that Gwyn built with Rise Against Hunger in the USA in 2016, Feed The Hungry started rice-meal packing in the UK. The food was sent from the UK to our partners in Kenya and Zimbabwe – a similar model that is used by FTH USA, who send vast numbers of rice meals to partners around the world. In 2017, Hand To Hand was created – a dedicated UK food packing programme aimed at churches, schools, and community groups, which provided a tangible experience for volunteers wanting to tackle world hunger.
The partnership with Premier came to a natural end in 2018, and we began a new relationship with UCB Radio. This was also the year that Gwyn made a connection with Yan Hrosu – a young church leader in Ukraine. We didn’t know it at the time, but that relationship was to become a crucial part of Feed The Hungry’s relief effort in the Ukraine War that started in 2022.
Local Emergency Food
In 2020, with Covid spreading around the world, Feed The Hungry had to temporarily suspend its Hand To Hand Food Packing programme. But the Covid lockdowns highlighted a new problem – the hunger and struggle of people locally. Feed The Hungry began a UK-focused initiative to deliver emergency food parcels for those needing support while under lockdown.
This in turn led to a new partnership. In 2021, Feed The Hungry merged with Coventry foodbank, moving its operations from Leicestershire to Coventry. As well as the foodbank, Feed The Hungry took over responsibility for a 25,000 square foot warehouse, which was renamed ‘The Halo Centre’. In the following years, The Halo Centre would become a hub and home for many Christian organisations – GAIN, Hope Coventry, Hope into Action, and two churches.
Local and Global
While continuing its international work of both the Every Child, Every Day programme, and disaster relief efforts, particularly in Ukraine, Feed The Hungry’s UK-focus was headed up by Gavin Kibble MBE, who became the UK Projects Director. This led to initiatives like The Community Pantry, Pathfinder and MyPathway, which have helped thousands of people, not only with food support, but directly identifying and tackling the root causes of poverty, which might result in needing to use a foodbank or pantry.
In 2025, Gwyn moved on from his role (at that point CEO of Feed The Hungry UK), and relocated to Africa in order to work more closely with our partners in East Africa. Gavin took on the role of CEO in January 2025.
As I look back at the journey Feed The Hungry has been on over the past 21 years, partnership has always been at the core of what we do. We don’t work in isolation, but it’s through relationship with other like-minded organisations and individuals that growth comes and, more importantly, God’s Kingdom is built.
