Inverurie Foodbank
Inverurie Smile Care have been supporting the foodbank since 2017 and we are proud at the end of 2018 to have agreed our Community Partnership, offering long term support with regular donations. We have teamed up with the Inverurie Green Grocer to be the supplier of our monthly donation to the Foodbank Centre in Inverurie.
Every fourth Friday the Inverurie Green Grocer delivers crates of products to Aberdeenshire North Food Bank; the drop offs are funded by Inverurie Smile Care as we chose to shop local and we aim to offer the users of the foodbank different items to what might usually be donated.
As per the Green Grocer:
We try to find a balance between including more unusual products but also ensuring there’s value. When putting the boxes together, we try to split the contents into thirds: one third more basic items: rice, pasta, noodles: the sort of things which can be a good basis for a meal. We then try to include more convenient foods: ready to eat chilli and tagines are great value, quick to prepare and packed with veg. The remainder of the boxes are made up with a mix of snacks and handy items: oatcakes, savoury biscuits and cereal bars.
We’re happy to help Inverurie Smile Care provide a good mix of items for their donation to the food bank and it’s great that they’ve chosen to “shop local” but also provide those who use the food bank with, what we hope is, an interesting and varied selection of items.
As per recently released end of year statistics about the emergency food Aberdeenshire North Foodbank have provided from April 2018 to March 2019:
In that time, we have provided 3927 emergency food parcels to local people. Of this number, 1264 went to children. This is a 31% increase from the previous year, and whilst we know some of this is due to our Peterhead Foodbank Centre opening in June 2018 and being able to meet local need in the area (previously we supplied emergency food boxes to organisations in Peterhead) we have also seen increases in demand in our centres in Ellon and Inverurie. We believe the local increase is in the main due to people struggling with making ends meet, be it in receipt of in or out of work benefits, issues with Universal Credit and in-work poverty.
We obviously couldn't do the work we do with the support of local people, businesses and organisations who support us with food and financial donations, and also without the support of our team of AMAZING volunteers. Thank you to you all! We are releasing our statistics today in line with The Trussell Trust, to which we are affiliated. They report a UK increase in provision of 19% and in Scotland a 23% increase.
Have a read of our involvement on the Foodbank's website and look out for updates on the Green Grocer's Facebook page!
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