Children growing up in poverty face constant daily hardships and harsh living conditions that can steal away their childhood. The unrelenting stress of poverty, negatively impacts children's health, social, emotional, and cognitive development, behaviour, and educational outcomes. It can hinder a child’s brain development with long-term consequences on physical and mental well-being, leading to lifelong effects that follow them into adulthood. Research at the London School of Economics has robustly demonstrated a causal link between low income and worse child outcomes – it is poverty itself that damages children’s life chances; conversely, when families’ incomes increase, children do better.
 At a time when youths strive to keep up with social norms that say what you wear is a statement about who you are, attending social events/out of school activities in ragged clothes is often embarrassing and can hinder friendship building and worse. Children with inadequate clothing are affected in painfully silent ways that diminish their quality of life and opportunities.
 A large percentage of our target users are based in Hackney, which has the third highest child poverty rate in the UK. A study by leading charity Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) shows 48% of children in the borough were living below the poverty line in 2017/18, up from 41.3% in the previous year.

In line with Lending Hope's mission to support poverty-stricken families, we would like to run Dressed with Dignity - a service to distribute clothing and shoes to 400 local families to ensure that their basic needs are met. The families we are targeting find each and every day a struggle. Between rental payments, tuition, clothing, shoes, and food, there’s only so far their meagre income will stretch. Many of these families find themselves in desperate need due to unemployment, complicated family situations, poor health, or other extenuating circumstances beyond their control.
Dressed-with-Dignity, like our previous four clothes drives, will be carried out in a way to maintain the dignity of our users, keep their pride intact and ensure they don't feel second-class, belittled, nor beggars. We will send out a catalogue of various different clothing that the families can read through in their own time and select what they like. We then give them the choice to either come to collect what they have picked out or offer a volunteer to drop it off, in order to maintain their anonymity. This saves them from meeting other people and feeling second-class.
 London’s Poverty Profile 2021: Levels of happiness, feeling worthwhile and life satisfaction have fallen across the capital. In winter 2020/21, anxiety scores were 44% higher than pre-pandemic levels. We at Lending Hope want to prevent young people and their families falling prey to these statistics through Dressed-with-Dignity. This project, which will be followed up by subsequent clothes drive, is literally a life saver to families!

Dressed with Dignity fills an important gap within the community; we are the only charity which provides brand new clothes at no cost whatsoever to poverty-stricken families.