Posted:
Monday - November 29, 2021
11:13 am
Earlier this year, FareShare ambassador and footballer Marcus Rashford was named as the Postcode Hero by People’s Postcode Lottery. Rashford marked the occasion by presenting a cheque to FareShare and the Trussell Trust for £250,000, raised by the Lottery’s players.
The £125,000 funding received by FareShare has supported its network of more than 10,500 charities and charity groups in their effort to ensure that surplus good-to-eat food reaches people in need.
One of the charities supported by FareShare in the West Midlands is Help to Make Tummies Full. Since being founded last October, Help to Make Tummies Full has been delivering food parcels almost daily; helping over 4,000 children get nutritious meals and snacks. “Every child should be able to go to school without having to worry about when lunch is” says Lucy Dennis, founding member of Help to Make Tummies Full in Walsall, Midlands.
Lucy Dennis and the other mothers who founded Help to Make Tummies Full took inspiration from the work of Rashford:
“It’s 2021 now, no child should be going hungry. I was reading about what Marcus Rashford was doing and how COVID was making things worse than ever. I thought we have to do something”.
FareShare Midlands Director Simone Connolly said:
“Winter is always tough for struggling families and this year, in the aftermath of the pandemic, we’re anticipating demand for food to be extremely high. Thanks to the generous support of the players of People’s Postcode Lottery and Marcus Rashford, FareShare can support charities such as Help to Make Tummies Full to get food to families who need it.”
“FareShare makes it so much easier,” explains Lucy Dennis, “it means we can rely on this constant flow of food, so we know there aren’t going to be gaps in what we provide. Lots of fresh fruit and veg as well, which has the nutrition that a child needs. The food we get from FareShare is really things that you can make nice, wholesome, family meals out of.”
FareShare Midlands: Fighting hunger, Tackling waste, Creating opportunities
FareShare Midlands is the region’s largest food redistribution charity:
• 8.4m people in the UK are struggling to afford to eat
• In Birmingham alone 8,000 children are living in poverty
• 3.6m tonnes of food is wasted by the food industry every year in the UK
• Over 2m tonnes of food that goes to waste is still edible
• Last year our food helped over 550 frontline groups provide 16m meals
• We saved charities £2.5m on food (so they could spend it elsewhere)
• On average our food reaches 60,000 people each week
• On average 200 volunteers contribute 1,360 hours every week
For information about FareShare Midlands, visit the website
Help to Make Tummies Full. Find out more at here.
Marcus Rashford is a PostCode Here. Read more here.
