Last week’s 3-day Tesco Collection was amazing, bringing in 3.78 tonnes of food donations to the foodbank. That’s the most we’ve ever collected from this annual 3-day event at Tesco. Thank you to everyone who donated at the store or helped with the collection.
Lots of people have asked how long that amount of food will last. In 9 of the last 12 months we have given out more than 3700kg food in a month, and last December we distributed around 1 ton more. So at this time of year, we’d expect that amount of food to last less than a month. However we don’t only distribute by weight and aim to give nutritionally balanced food parcels.
The lovely festive extras that people gave, like mince pies and advent calendars, will be sent out very soon to make sure they get to people in time. The basics like tinned potatoes and meat pies will be used in date order. Some items that people give lots of, like baked beans, we’ll probably still be giving out next year! That’s why we often ask for specific things we are short of and sometimes spend money to buy items, to make sure our food boxes give people enough for 3 days of balanced meals.
At the end of November, we’re wrapping up our #6forSouthend campaign but you can donate money to support the work of the foodbank anytime, through Paypal www.paypal.com/uk/fundraiser/charity/3229006 or Wonderful.org wonderful.org/charity/southendfoodbank