As food banks and frontline charities face up to their hardest Christmas ever, Isle of Wight residents are being urged to give the gift of their time by taking part in the UK’s biggest food donation drive.
The Tesco Food Collection is taking place in all Tesco stores from 1st-3rd December, and the Trussell Trust and FareShare are urging volunteers to sign up to support the event in store.
It comes as both charities face an unprecedented demand for food. The Trussell Trust, which has the largest foodbank network in the UK, has seen a 46% increase in the number of food parcels given out in recent months, while FareShare has a growing list of thousands more frontline charities seeking food.
During the collection, Tesco customers on the Isle of Wight will be encouraged to donate long-life food to support the charities in their work. Donations for the Trussell Trust will help its network of food banks provide emergency food parcels to people in crisis, while donations to FareShare will support its food deliveries to thousands of frontline charities. Tesco, which has been partnering with the charities for the past 10 years, will once again top up the customer donations by 20% in cash.
Volunteers are needed to staff the collection points because when volunteers are present they collect considerably more food. The fact that one in five food parcels given out by the Trussell Trust come from donations from Tesco and its customers underlines how much the donations made in-store are needed.
Emma Revie, CEO of the Trussell Trust, said:
“We are expecting that even more people will be forced to use a food bank this winter and the Tesco Food Collection is vital in ensuring we can support everyone who comes through our doors.
“Supporting the Tesco Food Collection this December by volunteering could make all the difference to your local food bank during this busy period. You could donate a couple of hours of time and volunteer during the collection or, alternatively, you could donate food to your local Tesco donation point.”
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Lindsay Boswell, CEO of FareShare, added:
“The cost-of-living crisis is forcing more and more people to turn to their local charities for support with food and other services, meaning the demand for FareShare food has skyrocketed.
“The Tesco Food Collection is a vital event for FareShare, helping to bring in much-needed long-life food that will help us continue our support of the people most in need this winter. Volunteering at the Tesco Food Collection this December will make a huge difference during this increasingly difficult time.”
Those interested can sign up to volunteer with FareShare or with the Trussell Trust.
If Supermarkets were not so greedy with their over the top inflation price increases
People could help out more.
Lower the prices.
The UK is officially a third world country.
Emma Revie, CEO of the Trussell Trust, who is paid over £100,000 a year, or around two grand a week, as well as five other directors trousering over £60,000 to £90,000 a year each, all want you to donate, so they keep getting paid.
The total employee benefits (including employer National Insurance contributions and employer pension costs) of the Key Management Personnel (CEO, Chief strategy officer, chief operating officer and company secretary) was £349,983 for the year (2020: £210,007).
total amount of donations spent on wages and salaries – over £6.6 million in a year. Page 61 of 2021 accounts as shown on government charity accounts website.
They have a nerve asking for money
They are asking for food and volunteers, not money. If you’d bothered to read the article before posting your usual self-righteous drivel you’d know that.
But it’s still a valid point though, isn’t it, the amount of money these charities are paying themselves in wages etc?
No, it isn’t.
Charities are, basically, not-for-profit businesses. Essentially everything they generate that, in a normal business, would go into shareholder’s pockets, goes to helping the cause(s) they target.
Like all businesses they require competent leadership and management. That costs money. How well do you think this, or any other large charity, would fare if they were run entirely by volunteers?
Personally, I donate to the RNLI (Chief Executive on £160,000) and Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance (Chief Executive on £80,000) and I’m perfectly happy with that as they both do exactly what they are supposed to do. Saving lives.
the charities love gullible mugs like you menace the denis – you give them money, they spend it on their mortgage payments – so effectively you are buying their house for them – mug.
funny how they want people to volunteer but aren’t willing to volunteer their own time for free – the very definition of charity is to do something without reward
as for donating to the dinghy people taxi service, aka RNLI – you are even worse than I thought – they need all donations stopped until they leave those liars that were perfectly safe in france, in the channel.
I doubt the people with second homes will read this, due to their not actually living in them. Shame we haven’t got a representative in Govt who could argue for the island.. oh.
Sorry, no, I’d want to know exactly who the food parcel hand-outs are going to before helping or giving my time. I’m aware of far too many people claiming hand-outs who are not in dire need of it. Yes, there are obviously deserving cases out there and they need help but many people’s idea of ‘poverty’ is slightly skewed these days.
I can personally think of three families that have not been shy about telling others they have had food parcels etc and advised others how to get them whilst holding an expensive iPhone in their hand.
Convince us the food parcels go only to deserving cases and you’ll get a lot more support.
Yes I totally agree with that people want everything these days and don’t know what poor is
Yeah, year, yeah. Kids these days.
We used to have to get out of the lake at three o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at t’ mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
That is never going to happen. There are, and always will be, people who work the system to their own advantage.
It is almost always the case that introducing measures that stop the undeserving from getting help they don’t need stops more getting the help they do need. If you ensure food parcels only go to “deserving cases” you will actually help far fewer of those “deserving cases”.
The question is: Are you more concerned with helping “deserving cases” or with stopping the undeserving even if it means fewer “deserving cases” will actually be helped?
i overheard a woman the other day bragging about getting a back payment from the benefits and she was paying full price on the ferry, whilst telling anyone that would listen, how she was going to shop, shop, shop in pompey.
leeches, burdensome leeches. I am most certainly more concerned with making sure undeserving don’t get anything, after all, only those that genuinely have no where to get food, will still be hanging around as the hunger bites- the undeserving will have cleared off long before they get really hungry
If the government stopped shelling out 7 million a day on economic migrants they would have more money in the coffers to help people here.
it’s quite simple when these migrants arrive two stamps are needed 1. Declined 2. Deported .. end of. Migrants are supposed to claim asylum in the country they first arrive in, they only want to get here for all the handouts and benefits.
Not exactly nice individuals – all men
who leave their women and children back home in the unsafe country NOT.