A really crate effort for festive food bank
Perth and Kinross Foodbank volunteers, including Eleanor Kelleher (front left) have been overjoyed with people’s generosity volunteers taking part across Perthshire.
“Whether you were standing in the Tesco stores receiving the food, driving vans or carrying heavy crates and sorting all the donations in our warehouse, they all did the most marvellous job.”
The volunteers are still busy, as businesses and individuals have been bringing food to Cutlog Vennel in Perth where the food bank is based.
The Tesco collection alone is thought to have brought in 650 crates, but generous people are adding to this daily.
Eleanor added: “We start to get busy at Harvest festival time when schools and churches think of us.
“Then all through November it builds as Christmas comes onto people’s radars.
“Our stock level a month ago was at 10 tonnes, we’ve just added about 50 per cent to that.”
Another contributing factor to the pile of supplies the food bank is a selfie craze that has taken over the Gypsy Traveller community.
“A variation of the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ has been happening in the Traveller community,” Eleanor explained.
“People are going to ASDA, filling a shopping trolley, taking it to the till and donating it to us. They take a selfie and nominate the next person to do it.
“We did not know this was coming to us and recently, instead of a trolley getting filled every week or so in Asda, our drivers were suddenly off to pick up three or four full trolleyloads a day.
“It’s felt a bit mad keeping up, we had to hire a van to cope.
“This craze has been an amazing source of particularly baby items and we’re very grateful to the Traveller community.”
Now the rush is on to get donations in before Christmas, Perth and Kinross Foodbank has asked for some guidelines to be followed to ensure donations get to them safely.
They accept items in on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings, 9am-11am but close on December 20 for Christmas.
Residents can hand in donations and large collections this week, but the really big intake will be on open days next week, Monday 10, Wednesday 12 and Thursday December 13, from 9am to 11am.
The Perth and Kinross Foodbank asks that people make sure there’s no chilled, no fresh food and no out of date items in the donations.