First of all the good news! Our friends at Board in the City CIC have agreed that we can host our community pantry there from April! This means we can continue this vital project after we leave our current premises.
Now for the bad news - we missed our last two fundraising targets, and also are going to run out of paid forward soups and hot drinks for folks this month. This has put a bit of a dampener on our exciting news about a new home for the pantry.
Our community pantry has been running since 2020 and we intend to keep running it for as long as we can, as long as it is needed. Sadly, the need for this pantry only seems to increase each month!
It's a very informal setup, unlike food banks which require referrals and are not available to many people who have short-term hardship or just need to access healthy food for whatever reason - we all need to eat, after all!
Aside from one Lottery Grant last year, the pantry is 100% funded by and dependant on the generosity of you, our community. You can help by:
Paying forward hot drinks - this month our Patreon supporters have covered 27 of these, but we'll get through those in the first week, so if you can help, that would be amazing!
Each month, we set targets to cover the cost of collecting food from local co-ops and The Big Difference, a local charity. This important job is done each Wednesday and Friday by Graham and he picks up from 5 locations each week. We didn't manage to raise enough for the collections in January, but we decided to go ahead with them anyway as they are vital to making sure the pantry is stocked.
Can you help to make these figures look better? We made it in November, but December and January were not so good.
We have been doing a jumble sale (thanks to our pre moving attic cleanout, we had a LOT of stuff!) - this continues this week and next. This is helping to make up some of the shortfall, too.
Can you imagine anything better than home cooked soup and a friendly, warm space to sit and enjoy it, when you're having a difficult day?
Each week, we make delicious, nutritious soup in house, using some supermarket surplus and basic ingredients we buy in, and lots and lots of love.
This is offered to anyone who comes in on a pay-as-you-feel basis - and we also have the option for you to 'pay it forward', enabling us to provide soup for people who can't afford to pay anything at all.
Not only does this give somebody a hot lunch, it's also a chance to sit in the warm and enjoy a friendly chat. This is priceless - but we can't offer this without financial support.
We can't thank you enough for supporting us in this project. It makes such a difference to the people who use the pantry and has built a b