Community Food Pantry

Hello! We are three Egerton Road residents called Becky, Amy and Jenny. Mgr Massey has kindly enabled us to set up a Community Food Pantry (CP) which is now available at the back of the church.  We hope to envelop the whole of the Bishopston community in this endeavour, so we started by talking to the congregation on Sunday, 6th February. We were really touched by the amount of support and offers of help that we got right from the offset! We also realised that people had a lot of questions, so we hope that this article helps shed some light on what we are doing:

Who is the Community Pantry for?

Anyone from any faith (and none) who is suffering the effects of food poverty and needs help feeding themselves and their family. They can help themselves to the food on a trust basis. They do not need to have a referral from school, Social Services or have food vouchers.

What will be available to them?

They will be able to go into the church anonymously and pick up a balanced and healthy meal for that day. For storage purposes, the meals will be made up of tinned or dried food. We cannot assume that the families in need have anything more than a hot plate and/or microwave. There will also be sanitary products and nappies available for those that need them.

When will it be open for people to use?

Tuesdays – Fridays from 8am to 11am

How can I help?

At the moment, we are mainly in need of food donations and money to get it all going.

Many of you have donated already and we are extremely grateful to you. Thanks to Mgr Massey’s kindness, we have the capacity to store items in the cellars of the church, too.

What food should I donate?

When buying food to donate, please remember that we cannot assume the CP users have an oven but only a hot plate and a kettle.

We aim to deliver to them a balanced meal. Here are some examples of meals to give you an idea of what we need:

MEAT OPTION: 2 x tins meat balls in tomato sauce, 1kg pasta, 2 x tins of peas, 2 x tins of fruit salad, 2 x tins of rice pudding

VEGETARIAN/VEGAN OPTION: 2 x tins of vegetable chilli, 1 x 300g packet of bulghur wheat/quinoa mix, 2 x tins 340g sweetcorn, 2 x tins of peaches, 2 x tins of custard

Here are some other ideas of what items to donate:

Tinned meals – meat and vegetarian/vegan

Rice, pasta, couscous, bulghar wheat, quinoa

Tinned vegetables (eg.sweetcorn, green beans, carrots, peas)

Tinned Fruit (eg. Peaches, pears, pineapple)

Tinned puddings (eg. Rice pudding, custard, sponge pudding)

Sanitary products (eg sanitary towels, tampons)

Nappies/pull ups

UHT milk

Tea bags and instant coffee.

Where do I take my donations?

You can leave your donations in the Presbytery, in the parcel box outside the Presbytery door or direct to Mgr Massey.  If you have a large donation, please do get in contact via the WhatsApp group and we will arrange to meet you at the Church for storage.

How do I donate money?

At the moment, please give any cash to Mgr Massey or through the door of Jenny at 57 Egerton Road in an envelope marked “Food Pantry”. In time, we will add a CP button to the donation point in the church and hopefully set up a bank account.

How do I get in touch for more information?

We are setting up a WhatsApp group for anyone who would like to be kept up to date with the Community Pantry and who would like to donate goods, money or time to the cause.

If you would like to keep in touch in this way, click on the link below to join the WhatsApp group:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/Kq3UpC345FdDOPMnNwQfja

For those not on the WhatsApp group, we will keep messages flowing in the Newsletter.

Many thanks in advance for your generosity.

Shockingly, new figures suggest that after you take into consideration the rising housing costs, around 30% of children in the UK are growing up in food poverty. Let’s work together to try to help those that we can.

Leave Comment

Your email address will not be published.