Holiday season is nearly upon us!!
It is such a great time, the weather is beautiful, the sea and beaches in Bournemouth are among the best in the world, we have the New Forest on our doorstep and are so privileged to live in this amazing part of the country.
And yet we are having to provide 2030 extra lunch boxes and 286 extra food parcels throughout the 6 weeks of the school holidays, to enable families who usually have free school meals for their children to be able to manage.
We couldn’t do this without the help of generous individuals, churches and businesses. The Co-op have given us £581.43 towards providing this service, 4COM have committed to paying for bread, butter, ham, cheese, chicken, cake bars, crisps, fruit and a fruit Juice. Aldi are supporting the project with £30/week, RBH and Bournemouth University are raising money by holding a coffee morning – with their ‘top brass’ working as Baristas!!
St George’s Methodist Church are making up all the sandwiches for 2 local schools with the help of The Rotary Club members. The Joy Café are distributing the lunches and hampers to families of another local school from the Community Café in Churchill Gardens, where parents will have the opportunity to have a cup of coffee and watch the children play in the park and join in the activities that are provided there.
This has been a huge community effort and we are grateful for all the support.
I would like to mention especially Julia, Claire and Alex, 3 of our volunteers here who have done a sterling job in organising and co-ordinating the efforts of all those involved. Their tireless phone calls and e-mails – not to mention sleepless nights over whether we were going to have enough money and stock!!!
There are still a couple of ways that you can help if you would like to.
Buy a ‘deferred coffee’ for a family member at the Joy Café – just ask the staff members, they’ll know what you mean!
You can also keep the donations of our regular food parcel items coming in. Items that are particularly needed right now include: UHT milk, long-life juice, tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned fish, tinned tomatoes, tinned vegetables, as well as pasta, curry sauces and snacks, both savoury and sweet.
The extra food parcels that we’re distributing to combat holiday hunger have a big impact on our regular deliveries – and we are already stretched in the warehouse. So any help you can give at this time, will make a humungous difference!
As ever, with massive thanks!
Debbie
