Dear friends and supporters of the West Somerset Food Cupboard.
We have to start by saying we were bowled over by the generosity of the local community in the lead up to Christmas. Families, children, individuals, community groups, local businesses, church groups and many more came with vans, boot loads, boxes and bags of donated food, all of which enabled us to meet the huge demand for food at what has been and continues to be a difficult time for many.
Financial contributions have helped enormously too, as they’ve enabled us to top up any gaps in supplies. Thank you so so much! We’ve tried to make sure we have thanked everyone for their contribution but if we’ve missed you out, please accept our apologies and our sincere gratitude here and now – things just got a little busy and we had to prioritise getting food out to where it was needed most; we hope you understand.
Our volunteers too pulled out all the stops to make sure that regular food boxes and bags were ready and available for delivery along with the Christmas treat parcels. If you thought Santa’s elves were busy you should have seen our team at work!
We currently DO NOT need:
- Cereal
- Tea
- Pasta
- Soup
- Tuna
- Anything out of date (you’d be surprised!)
We would especially welcome:
- Rice (sachets or small packets)
- Tinned hot dogs and meatballs
- Tinned fruit
- Tinned potatoes
- Tinned vegetables
- Sugar
For those who are able to donate regularly and who kindly ask what we need: smaller rather than larger packets and tins are most helpful.
We can always double up for large families, but large items are hard to split for smaller households. Also, the boxes get too heavy to safely lift if filled with catering sized items.
We are grateful for any non-perishable food items which have a long shelf life, but we can’t take any fresh, home-made, chilled or frozen food at the moment.
It’s always disappointing to receive food items that have already passed or are close to their ‘use by’ date. We can’t give them out, so we have to dispose of the contents and recycle the containers.
This creates a lot of extra work that we don’t really have time for – thank you for your understanding in this matter.
194 regular food boxes or bags were distributed during December as well as 93 Christmas treat Packs, making the total number of 2021 food parcels provided 1,305.
That makes 16,705 since the Food Cupboard was established in 2007.
We hope you will be willing to continue to partner with us in 2022 by supporting the West Somerset Food Cupboard in any way that you are able.
Thank you for continuing to care.
Ali and the Food Cupboard team
