Generosity at its best!

We have been blown away by the generosity of the local community and business who donated over the Christmas period. Not only that, but we have now regular donors who want to continue not just through the festive season, but have recognised the continued need throughout the year. We have families who will shop monthly with the express purpose of driving to the Kings centre and dropping off food. We have business that have taken one of our collection baskets and are regularly filling them!

This has meant we have been able to open two more hubs. This allows people who have one of our vouchers that have been issued by our partner agencies, to have access to emergency food parcels 6 days a week.

We are supporting student support services in 6 schools with two more applying and student support services in Leicester college and the Uni’s. We have received case studies that show how receiving emergency food parcels has introduced the person struggling to advice and support that has moved them away from crisis and back on a level that they can manage.

We are concerned at the number of people accessing our food bank which currently stands at over 4000. This is up over 1000 from last year and we still have 3 months to go before the end of year total. We monitor the reasons people access our food bank and low income is by far the main reason. When our advocacy and advice staff listen to our clients, we find that benefit changes and benefit delays are two of the main reasons for low income. People are trying to manage their budgets but are not even receiving the money they are entitled to. This leads to further issues such as losing their home, marriages and partnership breakdown and children not getting the meals they need to develop physically and mentally. We are seeing people who are working, having to borrow money just to try and manage which inevitably leads to debt that spirals out of control.

Here at Leicester South Food Bank, we are working with partners to to try and bring in specialist services and agencies that can support and advice people who are desperate to break out of the poverty trap. We are grateful to funders who have given us financial support to keep our advice and advocacy service going until June, but we need more donations if we are to continue this essential work beyond then. We are so grateful for all the donations of food, but are asking people if they could support us long term by setting up a standing order of £5 month.

If you feel this is something you could do please visit our donations page https://leicestersouth.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/donate-money/ and download a standing order form. For the price of a coffee and a cake each month, you could be helping someone to have hope and a future.

Once again we would like to thank you all for supporting your community,  and have been so generous and enabled us to distribute food to over 4000 people in Leicester and Leicestershire.

If you want more information please visit our web site https://leicestersouth.foodbank.org.uk/

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