Donations vital as Trussell Trust prepares for busy Christmas
The pandemic has had a huge impact on the charity's services already this year.
The Trussell Trust, a charity founded in Salisbury, are urging shoppers to continue making donations this Christmas as they team up with Tesco once again.
The supermarket's 'Food Collection' service takes place in the run up to the festive season every year, but, due to the pandemic, 2020's campaign is more vital than ever before.
From today (Thursday 19th November) these collections will be taking place outside both Tesco Extra and Tesco Express stores across the country, including Salisbury's Southampton Road shop.
We have until Saturday evening (21st Nov) to give what we can.
Six emergency food parcels are expected to be given out every minute this winter by the food bank charity, a 61% increase on demand.
As figures from the Office for National Statistics show, there were a record number of redundancies in the UK, in the three months to September.
With even more set to happen over the coming months, it could lead to additional families needing the support of food banks.
Chief Executive of the Trussell Trust, Emma Revie, told Greatest Hits Radio:
"We have already seen a shocking 47% increase over the first six months of this pandemic and it looks like it will get even tougher for people on the lowest incomes as we go into winter.
We don't think it's right that anyone should come to a food bank, but whilst we're facing this level of need everything you can do, every can you can donate in store will make a difference and it will enable our food banks to support people now and over the winter months."
CHALLENGING YEAR
In the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic, from April 1st to September 30th, the Trussell Trust and its food banks gave out 1.2 million emergency food parcels across the UK, 5,047 in Wiltshire.
On average, 2,600 were distributed every day to children around the country.
At the start of this global crisis, Emma was unsure whether the charity would be able to cope with the huge increase in demand.
But she says that the work of her staff and volunteers has been incredible:
"As we first went into the pandemic at the end of March, we saw an instantaneous doubling of the number of people coming through our doors, at the same time our food banks were contending with the fact that a large percentage of volunteers were over the age of 65 and many of them were having to shield, some of them were becoming unwell, other volunteers had child care responsibilities so huge pressures on that aspect of our service.
At that time food was not as readily available by supermarkets so how were we going to get access to supplies and there was a point really at the end of March and early April where I wasn't sure if our food banks were going to be able to keep going but our food banks weren't willing to accept that and neither were the general public so we saw incredible generosity for donations and then people stepping forward to volunteer and our services kept going throughout this challenging period of time, it was astonishing.
The hard work and the perserverance and sheer determination not to close down when people were needing us the most, so really I'm in awe of our volunteers, staff and our food banks, they done what I never would have thought was possible."
HOW TO HELP
The Tesco collection points are going to be happening for three days outside their stores.
You can find your local Tesco by clicking here.
Any long life food donated there will go directly to the Trussell Trust's food banks and to charity FareShare.
If you are unable to go to the shops this week, you can help them by joining their "Hunger Free Future" campaign.
To find out more, visit their website.