Wanna snuggle up?

20^th October 2018

When action meets compassion, lives change.

I went to have a look round the blank country food bank yesterday, wow, it really does make you realise how fortunate you are but also how much other people are doing to help others.  What they do there is help vulnerable individuals and families in crisis through the provision of 3 days emergency food supplies while a longer-term solution is developed.  Their services have an enormous impact on the people using them, giving them that breathing space at a time of great need.  I was told that this year they have helped more families than ever, which is proof things are getting worse.  They run completely on charitable funds, because let’s be honest if the government helped fund them, then they’d have to admit there was a problem out there!  Looking round I suddenly realised if you’re going to go buy something for my food bank, maybe baked beans shouldn’t be the things, and they appear to receive more of those than anything.  When they provide 3 days of food, it’s stuff to make meals, so it’ll be a box of cereal with milk, a tin of potatoes, veggies and meat of some kind, or tin of fish and a packet of rice.  These meal packs are going to families not just single people, the craziest thing of all is not all of them have cookers, they mostly have a kettle but if they can’t afford food, they’re most likely not affording the gas bill!

They give out 1,600 toilet rolls every month – that’s nearly 100km of loo roll!   I’m pleased to say we handed over a few of those, actually we handed over enough stuff to fill my car to capacity, we also handed over £518.55, money collected in my meetings plus the £250 from my You’ve been Framed clip, then there’s what we’ve raised on our justgiving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/donatedinner which takes our total up to £564.45, plus any Gift Aid to be added. And on my £250, I think that’s another £50 which is epic.  Donating couldn’t be easier simply text: WWDD66 followed by the amount to 70070, imagine what it’s like to not just be hungry but not to be able to afford to feed your kids, that must just be the worst, well I know it is because mom has told me about how hard it was for her when we were small and how she struggled and one day someone helped her bringing a food parcel and a small gift for us all, so I’m guessing it was Christmas time and I think it was a Women’s group or maybe the Salvation Army, but whoever it was, she’s never forgotten.

The food is taken from the foodbank where I went, then set out to distribution point of which there are 22 (from memory), plenty of them out there helping anyway, so many kind people doing their bit on a voluntary basis.

Now I’ve seen how they work, I know how we can help and for the rest of this month I want long life milk, preferably semi-skimmed although we’ll take any kind, let’s ensure they have milk, if you want to buy a box of cereal to go with it or a bag of porridge great, heck if you want to add a carton of long life juice or a tin of fruit, brilliant, but let’s donate a dinner either by text with cash or in the form of food, let’s do our bit to help.

 You were all so generous! I could barely get in my car.

 it looks like a lot of milk doesn't it, but that could go in a day!

 These shelves need to be full!

I think we can safely say they have enough baked beans to be going on with, there was about 6 times this many at least!

 They were most definitely pleased with the food you'd donated.

 And the cash will help if they run out of food again!

 This month bring me some of this please;

I’ve just finished my Mr blanket, so now have matching Mr & Mrs lap blankets, I’m going to raffle them off to raise more cash, £2 a ticket, if you’re interested you can buy in meeting, if you’re not in my meetings, you can either pay via the justgiving page, message me to let me know, or via paypal bev_ww@yahoo.co.uk, I’ll happily post them to you if you win, let’s raise some more money, these are the blankets;

Sizes of each on is 127cm (49in) x 152cm (60in) roughly 5ft x 4ft.  Lovely soft, cuddly chenille to snuggle up to this winter.

Anyway because I had to unload my car yesterday to load all the food into it, I now have to go reload it for this morning’s meeting, so I better get moving.  If there’s anything else you’d like to know about the food bank this is their website https://www.blackcountryfoodbank.org.uk, their video says they help 16,000 families a year, it’s actually more this year because demand has gone up, we can thank universal credit for that, for the first time ever, they ran out of food in September, we have to help to ensure this never happens again!  Please be generous.

Enjoy your weekend, whatever you’re up too x