April was a busy month, we
had much to celebrate!
Congratulations
to Simon Bloom who ran in the London Marathon to raise funds for Colchester
Foodbank. He was delighted to have finished in 4 hours and 52 mins. He says he
loved every minute of it knowing that he was raising money for Colchester Food
Bank. Simon has currently raised an amazing:
£1435.49
Simon Prestney continues
with his £s for lbs diet project and has already raised £2107.31. You can
follow his progress on the ‘Just Giving’ website.
Brothers Alex, Chris and Matt, who ran the
Paris Marathon in memory of their Dad, (Jeremy Smith) raised an incredible
£7000 for the Trussell Trust . Alex said: "Dad had done some amazing community work volunteering with
Colchester Foodbank and we wanted to carry on his efforts. It's lovely to think
we can see the benefits while walking around town, right on our
doorstep."
We were contacted by a doctor from the recent picket line to
say that the public had been very generous and provided them with cakes,
biscuits and crisps to sustain them during the strike. The doctors agreed they had far too much
wished to donate the food to the Foodbank.
THANK YOU to all of them
Pasta Evening
What
a brilliant and enjoyable evening we had at the recent ‘Pasta Evening’ at The Red
Lion Hotel. This was an excellent fund raising and social event, which gave an
opportunity for over 60 volunteers and their guests to enjoy a three-course meal. 
We were entertained by local poet, Peggy, who
read some of her own lively poetry. Sadly, our other speaker, Marvin, a
footballer from Colchester United Football Club, was still recovering from an
operation and his replacement was delayed in traffic on the M1! So … thank you
to Andrew who stepped in and shared some funny stories!
A big thank you to, Denise, Jackie, and Ayden as
well as all staff involved; to all those who donated raffle prizes.
This event couldn’t have gone ahead without Jeannette’s
vision, belief, determination and
organisation. Congratulations …a very successful evening resulting in approximately
£700 being raised!
We hope this will now become an annual event!
Book
Donation
The owners of Wivenhoe Book Shop have kindly donated
a number of brand new primary age reading books left over from World Book Day.
We are also making up some book packages for
‘Home Start’ so that when they visit families they can take some new books with
them.
Plastic bags saga
The
saga continues! However we are very grateful to Amy Barrett from the Co-op, who donated 5000 strong carrier bags,
and to Mark, one of our volunteers, who, through contacts provided the Foodbank
with 20 or more boxes of strong F&F bags from Tescos. But the day will come when
we will have to buy bags!
New computers
We
are delighted to have two brand new computers and a wireless printer installed,
funded from a recent donation – this has made our lives much easier! A computer
is now available for any client to use to search for additional information.
Trussell Trust News
The latest Trussell Trust national figures show a
2% increase in foodbank use on the previous year with 1,109,309 three-day
emergency food supplies given to people in crisis throughout all of the 424
foodbanks.
In 2015/16.Trussell Trust data shows that benefit
delays and changes remain the biggest causes of foodbank use, accounting for 42
percent of all referrals (28 percent benefit delay; 14 percent changes), a
slight reduction on last year’s 44 percent. Foodbanks report people are still
being impacted by sanctions and a mix of delays and changes to various benefits
including Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), Employment Support Allowance (ESA) and
Personal Independence Payments (PIP). In some areas foodbanks report increased
referrals due to delays and arrears in Universal Credit payments
The Trussell Trust has just updated some of their operating systems.
One change that had an immediate impact was the introduction of a revised
client voucher which included additional information and a map. These vouchers
took up a whole A4 page which would have resulted in additional printing and
papers costs for each Foodbank. Foodbanks complained bitterly, and the vouchers
are now back to their original size, but still with the added data required.
Brightlingsea Foodbank
Win
Pomeroy, Brightlingsea foodbank organiser, recently arranged a collection day
at their local Co-Op in Brightlingsea. They collected 192.8kgs of food which
has been donated to us
Supermarket News
Sainsbury’s at Tollgate have now
launched their donation point and we will be celebrating this launch on Friday
20th May between 12:00 and 3pm. If anyone can help give out shopping
lists and collect the donations with a smile, please contact Anne at annebarney@colchester.foodbank.org.uk
Tesco’s Collection Days
We
will be taking part in the Trussell Trust /Tesco BIG supermarket collection drive at Tesco
Highwoods and Tesco Hythe on Thursday 30 June, Friday 1st July and
Saturday 2nd July between 10am and 3pm. We are asking for volunteers
for either store to help on either the Friday or Saturday for an or so to give
out shopping lists and collect the donations.
If
you can help, please can you let Anne know what time you would be available ..thank
you in anticipation! annebarney@colchester.foodbank.org.uk.
This month’s data
Food
collected from the supermarkets in April:
Waitrose 358.3kgs , Tesco Highwods 614.4kgs, Tesco Hythe 291.5Kgs,and the
Co-Op 3 weekly delivery 838.6 kgs, Priory Walk Sainsbury’s 119.7.ASDA 101kgs.The
amount of food donated altogether in April was:4627.3 kgs
This
month we gave out 55 family parcels and 124 standard, which is less for both
standard and family parcels than last month. However, the same month last year,
we gave out 168 standard parcels and 44 family.
Unfortunately,
as the computer system was down for the upgrading, not all the vouches have
been processed as yet so there is no data of how many children have been fed
for April
‘With a little help from our friends’…We are grateful to Bookers Warehouse who donate a variety of foods each week
which includes bread, potatoes
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