M&S Bridgnorth

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.

Times are tough for many people, and Bridgnorth Food Bank aims to offer a helping hand by ... - Providing food and support for the needy in the local area - Directing clients to the appropriate relevant agencies We're open on Monday mornings 10.30 - 12.30, issuing 'Emergency Food parcels' as required through the rest of the week

We are predominantly a zero waste project based in Highley, a small community in rural Shropshire. Throughout the pandemic we have supported local residents under the umbrella of ConnectAid, a larger CIC, but are now forging ahead with our own project. We will be continuing with zero waste food boxes. We don’t charge for the boxes, but do accept donations to help cover our project costs. We are more than happy to separate out donations from specific organisations into ‘goody bags’ that go alongside our regular boxes. We have the full backing of our local parish council and community for this venture.