Thanks to the amazing efforts of our supporters and volunteers as we ramped up in response to lockdown. Accordingly, FareShare delivered enough food to create almost 1 million meals to frontline charities in just 10 weeks.
Back in 2019, we delivered over 1,268 tonnes of in-date surplus food to 250 charities. These included school breakfast clubs, food banks and community centres. That was enough to create an incredible 3 million meals. We set out to match that in the following year but the coronavirus pandemic forced us to ramp things up even further. Since the lockdown came into effect, we had already delivered 397 tonnes of food. That was enough to create 938,524 meals.
Supporting our communities in response to lockdown
Demand for our food sky-rocketed during lockdown. We estimated as many as 51,000 people were accessing our food each week. As well as fresh food, we’ve been supplying packets and tins. All to help charities, local authorities and other organisations create food parcels for those who are vulnerable or self-isolating.
One of these was Poplar Street Primary in Tameside, which normally uses FareShare food for breakfast and after school clubs but has been delivering food parcels to families.
Headteacher Iain Linsdell explains:
“Schools might have closed through the lockdown but in many respects our partnership with FareShare enables Poplar Street Primary to become a different kind of community hub. Without FareShare, there would be hardship and hunger on a scale that we’ve probably never experienced in our communities, but through our partnership we’re able to reach our community, providing families with a weekly food delivery which stops them from having to go out to the shops and spend money they really can’t afford.”
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham believed our support was vital in making sure we all come through the coronavirus crisis together.
“FareShare has done phenomenal work delivering food to charities and local authorities throughout our city region. The work of charities like FareShare will be critical to maintaining that support as we look to recover from this period and build back in a way that’s fairer and better for all.”
Thanks to our amazing volunteers
As we entered #VolunteersWeek2020, we wanted to say a big thank you to all the fantastic volunteers. Thanks especially to those who are helping us get food out at such a critical time. These were tough times for everyone and it was heartening to see communities pull together as they have.
We need your help!
Research showed that it was likely even more people found themselves in hardship in the difficult months to come. We relocated to a larger warehouse to provide even more food to those who needed it. We still needed your help to fund our costs. Could you help us raise the £500,000 we needed?
Look out for more news soon on how you could get involved in our response to the coronavirus crisis.
