Bath Foodbank won The Bath Life Award in the civic category! Congratulations to Bath Foodbank and to all the Foodbank volunteers involved who together own this great accomplishment.

Grainne Moher, Foodbank Manager, said about the event evening, “It was a real privilege for us and our amazing volunteers to be recognised by our local community.  We can only operate because of the community.  Bath Foodbank is all about local people supporting local people.”

One of the judges said about the Foodbank, “Completely and utterly outstanding community effort from local people with hearts of gold. It met the needs of 4,200 people and is run by the most dedicated group of volunteers.”

Bath Foodbank is unique as it totally relies on the generosity of the community to function, specifically volunteers and a wide variety of organisations in Bath – local people supporting local people. Below are a few highlights of what the Bath Foodbank has accomplished this past year.  And it is important to note that this has been done with only 2 part-time staff.  95% of the work is done by volunteers.

 

  • Collected and distributed a total of 61,787 kilograms of donated food.

 

  • Telephone service – contacting clients (with permission) following a delivery or a visit to a distribution centre to see if we can provide information on services which may be able to offer further help.  This extra service is necessary as the aim is to direct people from crisis to further support, so that they may not need to use a foodbank in the future.

 

  • Bath Foodbank contacted all the Bath schools to offer help with food provision if needed over the summer holidays. From this, the Foodbank partnered with 3 schools to provide food to approximately 50 families who were facing real hardship.

 

  • Through fundraising in our local community and with the support of The Entertainer toy shop, we provided families with toy vouchers to help families in need with Christmas presents.  A total of approximately 240 children received a gift through this campaign.  This year more gifts were given than last year (200 gifts last year).  This was a fantastic community response to bring Christmas joy to children, but also relief to parents as otherwise their children might not have received anything.

 

  • We provided vouchers, toys and treats this Christmas to other organisations including the women’s refuge and to fathers seeing their children at Christmas so they could take them a gift.

Grainne would like to say thank you to all the volunteers, schools, churches and organisations that support the effort.

If you would like to know more about Bath Foodbank, please click HERE.