Sister Christine’s ‘Neighbours in Poplar’ lands cash windfall from City Bridge Fund

The ‘Angel of Poplar’ who has run her charity for 40 years befriending the elderly and those alone in London’s Dockland has landed an £85,500 windfall to help isolated pensioners.

Sister Christine Frost - Credit: Archant

Sister Christine Frost has been given a grant from the City of London’s historic City Bridge Fund for a project set up by Neighbours in Poplar, the charity she started back in the 1970s.

The grant is for an outreach worker to identify isolated elderly people over 75, put them in touch with the services they need and recruit and support volunteers to befriend and visit the housebound or those too frail to join the East End’s community life.

Neighbours in Poplar, which helps the elderly in Poplar and the Isle of Dogs, runs lunch clubs, Sunday dinners, leisure activities and organises celebrations at Christmas and other festivals, helping change lives over four decades for thousands living alone or isolated.

Among her pioneering projects is the annual ‘Christmas round’ where she gets contributions of gifts and festive food from the big Canary Wharf companies and distributes them to pensioners and poor families.

City Bridge Trust has awarded 415 grants totalling £22 million to groups in Tower Hamlets alone and £324m across London in the last 20 years. The City Corporation’s charity is London’s biggest independent grant-giver, making awards of £20 million a year to tackle disadvantage.

It helps change the lives of hundreds of thousands of Londoners by giving funds to charities and voluntary organisations like Sister Frost’s Neighbours in Poplar.