Dear friends and supporters of the West Somerset Food Cupboard
This month we have lots of ‘thank you’ messages to bring and some good news to share!
Food donations have continued to pour in, along with helpful funds too; we don’t always know who all our donors are, so we hope you are reading this and will accept this as our grateful thanks. Your generosity makes a real difference in the hardest of times.
Our volunteer team has continued to grow. Nine members of the team recently successfully passed their Level 2 Food Safety and Hygiene course and completed Allergens training. As we continue to work with the Charity Commission on the establishment of a new charity, we’ve been very happy to welcome even more volunteers to future trustee roles. We are grateful to them all for the experience, time and energy that they are generously sharing with us.
And to all the collection point hosts (shops, churches, community venues), thank you for enabling people to give and in many cases for delivering the donations to us in Alcombe. That is a great help.
Another thank you must go to the 1st Minehead Girl’s Brigade who have been collecting food for us. They have been learning about ‘generosity’ for their badges and wanted to find out more about how the generosity of local people helps those in need in the community. We had a lovely evening together, with the girls sharing great ideas about how to be generous and packing a food box ready for delivery.
Any non-perishable food items are gratefully received. This month we are low on:
- Packs of individual juice cartons
- Pot Noodles or Mug Shots
- Individual porridge pots
- Breakfast bars
- Tinned ham
We are delighted to tell you that plans for the Local Pantry are progressing well and we have just received notification of funds being awarded, so we can now progress this project. We look forward to sharing the details with you in next month’s newsletter.
90 food parcels have been distributed during March, some for large households and some for individuals, many of whom have no cooking facilities. It won’t be any surprise to know that household and individual budgets are under great strain at the moment. A single parent in receipt of a food box this week told us that he wanted to say thank you to each donor for each item in his box as it meant so much to know that people cared enough to help his family through a difficult time without even knowing them.
If you want to find out more about giving or getting help, or are interested in the Minehead Area Food Resilience Forum, please get in touch.
Happy Easter
From Ali and the Food Cupboard team
