Fareshare Sussex calls for volunteers to feed people

FareShare Sussex urgently needs volunteers to help collect food from 21 to 23 November as part of this year’s Tesco Food Collection. The charity delivers surplus food to 122 frontline charities in Sussex.

Volunteers are required next Thursday to Saturday to encourage Tesco shoppers to donate vital store cupboard essentials, such as pasta, tinned food, tea and coffee. These will be redistributed by FareShare to charities such as domestic violence refuges, lunch clubs for older people, breakfast clubs and homeless hostels.

The Tesco Food Collection is the UK’s biggest food drive and last year the public donated enough food to provide 3.5 million meals to vulnerable people across the country. Customers doing their regular food shop at Tesco will be asked to buy an extra item to donate to FareShare. Tesco also tops up all customer donations by 20 per cent.

Fareshare Sussex

Farihah Choudhury, a volunteer at the last Tesco Food Collection, said: “I loved volunteering last year – it was great to speak with shoppers donating food and the kindness I saw was wonderful. I believe everyone should have access to good, healthy food and I’d encourage anyone who can, to give some time to help stop people going hungry this Christmas.”

Mark Richardson, Fundraising and Communications Manager at FareShare Sussex, said: “Charities and community groups can struggle to keep up with demand during the cold winter months so donations are needed now more than ever to help vulnerable people.

“The Deputy Mayor of Brighton and Hove, Councillor Alan Robins, will be paying a special visit to Tesco Portslade next Friday 22 November to encourage people to donate and tell them about the work we do across Sussex.

“Volunteers play a huge role in the success of the Tesco Food Collection each year – by giving up just three hours of your time, you can make a big impact in helping more people understand the importance of donating food. The donations will help to ensure more people get a hot, nutritious meal this Christmas.”

Food

FareShare Sussex is the region’s branch of the UK’s largest food redistribution charity. We save over 563 tonnes of good surplus food from right across the food supply chain and redistribute it to 122 charities and community groups throughout Sussex.

In 2018/19 Fareshare Sussex provided enough food for over 1,300,437 meals (worth over £963,800 to the charity sector in savings.) It was given food from 500 food companies right across the food supply chain

FareShare Sussex is part of the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, with 22 Regional Centres across the country. It takes food from the food industry that can’t be sold in shops, either because of packaging errors or a short shelf life or overproduction.

That food, which is the same as the food you’d eat at home, is then redistributed through a network of 11,000 frontline organisations, across the UK such as homeless hostels, school breakfast clubs, domestic violence refuges, older people’s lunch clubs, food banks and hospices. FareShare provides enough food to create almost a million meals for vulnerable people every week and it saved 74,171,500 kg of carbon last year.

If you have three hours to spare, why not volunteer at any Tesco across Brighton and Hove and encourage people to donate food this Christmas so that as many people as possible across the city get a warm, home cooked meal over the festive period?

Anyone interested in volunteering can find out more and sign up here.