Sainsbury's Thetford

We are a community cafe that opens once a week to anyone who needs food. We believe that no one in our community should ever need to be hungry or alone. We rely on food donations from Fareshare and Tesco at the moment but would love to be able to expand so that we can reach out to more people within the community, We have many homeless people who access our services and also are able to take clothes, blankets etc with them. We have young families on low income and single people who are lonely. We ask for anonymous donations for the food if people can afford it if not we are happy to take unopened dry/tinned food for a swap. If they are unable to do either we ask for a little time to be donated and many of the homeless will stay and help tidy up wash up etc as this keeps them in the warm a little longer and also helps us out. Meet'n'Eat is manned totally by volunteers of all ages and we aim to make it a great Thetford project. In just a year we have grown from making approximately 20-30 meals on a Wednesday evening to 100-150.

The Harvest Centre church has launched Harvest food parcels to help those in need. We realise that the pandemic this year has caused many people to find themselves in financial difficulty. No one should have to worry if they are going to be able to eat today or not. We try to reach people via social media and hand out parcels weekly to various people and families in the community.

We've recently installed a community fridge as part of the initiative by Breckland Council to reduce food waste. The community fridge is situated in the Engine Room café, which is easily accessible via the main entrance to the building and the extended opening hours means the local community can use the fridge from early morning to late at night. At present we only have one major supermarket supplying us, and as demand is growing fast we’re finding that we soon have nothing left to offer those who need it. Since it's been installed it has been incredibly popular, particularly as the centre is located in an area with a high proportion of social housing and low income families. Therefore, any more donations that we can get to help increase our stock and meet these demands, would be really appreciated.