It is our 10th anniversary at the Westberks Foodbank this year and demand is outstripping supply .
We have 4 foodbank centres open, Thatcham, Newbury, Hungerford and Burghfield and Mortimer. We are opening a new centre in Tilehurst in July. We deliver 3 times a week throughout West Berks.
We regularly support the following charities with food provisions
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Loose Ends
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Newbury Soup Kitchen
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Fairclose Help the Aged
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Community Furniture Project
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Homestart West Berks
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Young People and Children First
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Two Saints Homeless Hostel
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Dingleys Promise
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Berkshire Women’s Aid
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West Berkshire Action for Refugees
And many others…
We currently support 11 schools with breakfast clubs or in-house Foodbanks and also provide emergency energy vouchers via text to pay for gas and electricity.
We are able to provide emergency supermarket vouchers via text or email to clients needing support at weekends or bank holidays.
In the colder months, we have provided over 250 heated throws to residents in West Berks allowing them to turn down their heating but keeping themselves warm and due to high cooking costs, we provide air fryers and slow cookers to reduce energy bills, we have provided cooking lessons and recipes.
We support rough sleepers with ration packs including self heating food so they are able to at least have a warm meal, these come at a huge cost to the Foodbank over £5.50 pet self heat meal.
We rely solely on donations of food, and financially from the wonderful residents and businesses of West Berks.
Each month we have to buy in over £400 worth of fresh fruit and Veg to enable each client to have what they need. We have reached out to all the allotments, to help us help those in need in this very difficult time for everyone.
Our donations are down by roughly 2 tonnes each month with us having an increase in the amount of people in need. We would normally accept roughly 12/13 tonnes each month through the generosity of public donations, however this has fallen dramatically with everyone feeling the effect of the cost of living crisis.
The council are providing £15 per child per week for 4 of the 6 weeks of the summer holiday. With the increase in the cost of living, this will not be sufficient to parents who are already struggling.
We, at the Foodbank have opened up our offer of help to those who not only receive free school meals, but to those who are very slightly above the threshold and receive no help. As a result, having reached out to all the schools, we are now in a situation where we have an extra 1447 people to support over the summer holidays (along with our usual monthly referrals of 800-1000. This not only causes financial difficulty for us, but also a logistical nightmare too. We estimate that this summer holiday, supporting those in need will cost over £45k
If there is any support available, we would be so very grateful, so we can work with others to ensure no-one goes hungry this summer holiday.
https://thegoodexchange.com/wb-cost-of-living/