M&S Kidderminster

Inependent food banks, community fridges, social supermarket. We are a not for profit organisation that has been running since 2012. Currently we distribute over 40 tonnes of food a month to thousands of families. In particular the people benefiting are mostly in receipt of universal credit and D.L.A, or are currently to embarrassed to use a food bank, and ours has choice and dignity where our clients can choose what they need. Primarily we advertise as a climate change project that helps to reduce poverty by supplying food weekly in multiple areas, this reduces the stigma of use. This is to reduce food waste, help save the planet, and get children involved in organising and planning food shares. We work closely with the home educated community and many other zero waste community groups. Lots of our volunteers have long term mental health issues or are on benefits, and we are a lifeline to them both for food and the community. We have been doing humanitarian aid work in the local community and internationally for 7 years. We sent out 180 tonnes of aid in 2016/2017 to various organisations and supported many local families. In September 2019 we started The Food Share Project. A project covering Telford, Shropshire, West Midland and into Wales, to reduce food waste form the food industry, mainly supermarkets & wholesalers, and safely transport and distribute the food to the local communities via food banks. We evolved fast. When the Covid19 pandemic hit the UK and we went into lockdown in March 2020, the demand for our services of our independant foodbank increased hugely. We opened a discout pallet supermarket in September 2020 which enabled us to rescue and sell more food. The funds from our supermarket enable us to further support our independant foodbank. More recently we have reacted to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. To date, we have sent out 1000 pallets of aid on over 23 lorries to Poland. This has been distributed, via our partners on the ground, to the refugees in Poland and also into Ukraine itself. We run community stores nationwide.

Moving Forward Community Fridge is based at Westlands Community Centre in Droitwich to support the whole of the Droitwich. We have the support of Hubbub and we are working closely with them. We work families predominantly on the Westlands estate and it has become clear that there is a need for support in the area, we have run a number of holiday hunger campaigns during school holidays and during lockdowns. Families have discussed with us that Covid has added pressure to their alrrady difficult financial situations and they are finding it increasing hard to feed their families. We are aware that there is already a Food Bank and Community Pantry in the town and we feel that the addition of our Community Fridge will only enhance the wellbeing and support offered to all families living in Droitwich. We are working with the Food Bank to support those in greatest need.

Run by the Community for the Community.- Run by volunteers we share surplus food to save waste and supporting families in need.We provife free food for children and subsidised meals in our community cafe . We run food Share three times a week plus .we deliver emergency food parcels to thosevin need We do this in areas of severe poverty and where people are struggling to provide healthy nutritious meals on a very limited budget. The group is run by volunteers and is totally reliant on donations. Based in Stourport on Severn we support families throughout Worcestershire and surrounding areas