New Foodbank to be officially launched for Waveney

Dominic Bareham, senior reporter Thursday, October 11, 2012
10:32 AM

A series of food collections will be held this weekend to mark the official launch of a Norfolk Foodbank scheme to provide food for the poor.

From this Saturday, the Waveney Foodbank will be operating independently of the Norwich Foodbank, which had previously provided warehouse facilities to the Waveney group to store food.

The day will begin with a launch ceremony at St Mary’s Church Hall in Diss at 1pm, followed by a series of food collections.

These will be taking place at Bungay Buttercross between 9.30am and noon, Budgens at Harleston from 9am to 4pm and the Co-Op in Diss from 9.30am to 3.30pm.

The group has been running since March and in July collected 925kgs of food from shoppers outside the Harleston Budgens.

Adrian Roy, a member of the Foodbank, said: “There has been an amazing amount of food collected over the Harvest Festival period by schools and churches.

“The number of different groups collecting for Foodbank has astounded us, some we didn’t even know were collecting until they arrived with a carload of food. A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed.”

The donations are distributed to people who have been recommended to the Foodbank scheme by social care agencies, such as the Citizens Advice Bureau.

The recipient is given a voucher which they can then take to a Foodbank distribution point to be exchanged for food.

Donations are taken to the foodbank warehouse, where they are sorted into boxes sufficient to provide a nutritionally balanced diet for three days for those who have hit life crises and cannot afford to eat.

There are different sized boxes catering for a single person, a couple or a family.

The Foodbank scheme was set up by the charity the Trussell Trust to help the 13 million people living below the poverty line in the UK and involves the charity partnering with churches to distribute enough food to last at least three days.