Dear friends and supporters of the West Somerset Food Cupboard,
We hope you’ve had a restful Easter, managed to dodge the showers and treated yourself to chocolate. We were very grateful to receive many donated Easter Eggs. We’ve popped these into our emergency food parcels and had enough to share with our Local Pantry members, many of whom have young families, so these will be especially welcome. Special thanks go to Minehead & West Somerset Golf Club and Butlins.
Helping Purses AND The Planet
During March we supported Love Food Hate Waste’s Food Waste Action Week campaign. Research from Love Food Hate Waste has shown that we could reduce food waste by 60,000 tonnes just by buying loose fruit and veg! Find out more here: lovefoodhatewaste.com/fwaw
Still on the subject of waste, did you know that 21% of the average Somerset bin is food waste? Reducing food waste at home not only saves you money but helps the environment too. SUEZ Recycling and Somerset Council offered a fridge thermometer and food caddy liners to our Pantry members.
A Pantry membership for 6 months gives an up to £500 saving on groceries per household. On 1 April, the weekly fee goes up from £3.50 to £4.00 which still gets you up to £30 worth of fresh food.
In addition, it also reduces food waste. Since opening, the Pantry has saved 17.5 tonnes of food that would otherwise have been wasted.
BBC News – The Pantry
The cost-of-living crisis has been a hard knock to all our living standards but particularly so here in West Somerset, where we are the lowest in the list of social mobility areas in England. Sadly, we live in a really challenging area, and a lot of people have fallen into food insecurity in the last few years. Thank goodness we have such a caring community where people work tirelessly to offer support, looking out for each other.
We’re always happy to share this uplifting story, so happily welcomed a BBC Points West crew along on a Pantry day to find out more about our vital local service.
You can see their news report here…
Of course, none of this would be possible without your support – donors, food collectors, local businesses, volunteers, charities. What a special place to live.
Can you help us by providing any of these items:
- Fruit squash
- UHT Milk
- Tins of sweetcorn or carrots or peas
- Individual custard pots / rice pots
- Tinned fruit
- Pasta or noodle mug shots
- Small cartons of juice
Ali You’re Amazing
We were sad to say goodbye to Ali Sanderson. Ali has been a guiding light in the development of the charity and will be missed. We wish her well with her future plans.
