'We've committed to carrying on delivering meals to families who are struggling'
Across Torbay up to 70 volunteers are now working to help deliver meals and food parcels to hundreds of struggling families.
Last updated 6th Jan 2021
It’s something which volunteers started doing in the first lockdown and the project is now being scaled back up because of the latest national lockdown.
All the meals are cooked by local restaurants and then distributed via schools.
Both primary and secondary schools, along with children's services, say how many meals or food parcels struggling local families need and volunteers from RE4orm community interest company deliver them - without learning the identities of those getting the help.
RE4orm founder Katie Cavanna said: "We started Food For Torbay (in March) so when Covid, the first lockdown, hit we decided to deliver meals and food parcels to families who were struggling at the time time - working with local restaurants such as Me & Mrs Jones, Shoreline, Curious Kitchen, Cactus Kitchen, Below Decks.
"We worked together to enable families to have nutritious meals and to be able to feed the families at a time when they were really, really struggling.
"We delivered over 50,000 meals and 50,000 food parcels over nine months.
"We didn't stop, we did it every week to ensure that families were supported in and out of lockdown.
"We're going to carry on as best we can. We've already had businesses approach us to say they want to support us again and we've committed to carrying on delivering meals to families who are struggling at the time.
"The service has proved to be really vital to a number of people.
"People have found themselves in a situation they never expected. I think it's really important that people appreciate that at times people had to decide whether they feed their family, pay their electric, pay their water, pay their rent or pay their mortgage.
"Dire, dire times and to have that knowledge that your family will be fed that there's some support out there has been a relief for many people.
"We've had feedback from families where they have had some support from us then they've managed to get back on their feet.
"They've had support from us and they want to volunteer.
"It's that cycle where it's not a hand out, it's enabling someone to step back up and then they can go and help people in their community."
For more about RE4orm click here