Weymouth's Free School Meals Bank feeds 200 families

Last week when the Government voted against extending Free School Meal vouchers during the holidays, Two Weymouth Town Councillors took it upon themselves to do something about it.

On Saturday Christine James and Alex Furhmann put a call out for food bags and ended up with over 200 to hand out to struggling families.

Alex said the response was great:

"We came up with the idea at 5 O'clock on Saturday afternoon and by 5pm Tuesday we were finished and got all the food bags out and completed, it was amazing. I still can't quite believe that we did it all in 72 hours.

"Tuesday was the busiest day, we got loads of stuff out to people. We ended up supporting nearly 200 families."

Councillors Alex and Christine had just planned to do it for the Westham area but by the time the free school meals public awareness had kicked in, Alex had other ideas.

"It became so aware to us that the whole of Weymouth was affected and by the end of Tuesday we delivered from Preston to Portland.

"The general reaction has been amazing, people are just talking about it, I got stopped in the shop and someone asked me about it and thanked me - and it was just, what's going on?

"People were so aware of the project and there was such positive work around it. For doing something in 72 hours that has such a positive affect on your community and shows that a little bit of effort goes a long way, I think that was key take away."

Because of the COVID health and safety regulations the team only opted for 'the donate a bag, give out a bag' for each child, so Alex said it only needed a core group of them.

"Christine was really great because she engaged with Ian Ferguson and got us a driver which totally changed everything, that covered the Preston to Portland element.

"Then it was me sitting with my phone as the texts and Facebook messages flooded in and said I need this can you deliver it here and then The Nest giving us the facility was so key in what we were doing and also we were there to load those bags."

They had an influx of people volunteering which unfortunately they couldn't use because of Health and safety restrictions.

But on a positive note Alex said that if they did want to do this in the future, they know they've got a small army behind them to support and help those that need vital food.

"It feels amazing helping residents, these are our neighbours and our friends. However I would feel 100 times better if we didn't have to do the whole project in the first place.

"The question still remains, how many children didn't we get to, how many families didn't we reach to give support to. And it's those question that remain unanswered."