Store food donations help feed thousands
THOUSANDS of meals have been provided to people in need over Christmas thanks to customer donations at Tesco stores in Southport.
Throughout the UK a total of three million meals worth of food was donated to charities FareShare and The Trussell Trust thanks to the food collection that ran in Tesco stores until December 2.
Shoppers were asked to donate long-life items to help people in need as part of their usual shop with Tesco topping up the value of the customer donations by 20%.
Last year’s collection resulted in more than three million meals worth of food donated to help people in need.
It brings the overall total donated by Tesco shoppers since the food collection scheme began in 2012 to more than 49 million meals.
In Southport, 12,912 meals were donated by customers.
The two food charities, FareShare and The Trussell Trust, see an increase in the need for donations at this time of year.
The food donated to food banks in The Trussell Trust’s network is given in emergency food parcels to people referred because they cannot afford to feed themselves and their families.
Food donated to FareShare is distributed to charities and community groups who use it to provide meals for vulnerable groups such as isolated older people and those in homeless shelters.
The 20% top–up donation from Tesco helps the charities in their work, by providing funding to run the food banks and distribute food.
Lindsay Boswell, CEO at FareShare, said: “The food donated at the Tesco Food Collection will make a tremendous difference to the thousands of charities and community groups that FareShare supports.
“These groups are doing amazing work with some of the most vulnerable people in our community.
“Thanks to the generosity of Tesco shoppers over the festive season, we have enough long-life food to provide more than 900,000 meals.”
Samantha Stapley, operations manager at The Trussell Trust, said: “Our food bank network has spent the last month making sure that people referred to them with no money for food don’t go hungry this Christmas.
“This work has been made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Tesco customers, store colleagues and volunteers during the Food Collection.”
Tesco’s head of comm- unity, Alec Brown, said: “We know that this annual collection makes a real difference in Southport and we would like to thank everyone who has donated, volunteered or helped with the food collection in store.
“Food collection is just one of the ways that Tesco has been supporting the two food charities.
A donation has also been made for every fresh turkey sold in Tesco stores and for every pack of Tesco Finest Candy Cane flavoured crisps sold over the festive period.
The supermarket’s clothing range F&F has also been selling festivethemed ‘hats with a heart’ with a donation of £1 from each hat split between FareShare and The Trussell Trust.
More than 164,000 of the hats have been sold.