Tesco customers help make a meal difference
Over 2330 meals were provided to people in need at Christmas thanks to customer donations at Tesco in Blairgowrie.
Across the UK a total of three million meals worth of food was donated to charities FareShare and The Trussell Trust during the food collection that ran in the supermarket giant’s stores until December 2.
Supermarket 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 per cent.
Thanks to customers’ generosity and the Tesco top-up, this year’s collection has seen over three million meals worth of food donated to help people in need. In Blairgowrie a total of 2333 meals were donated by generous Tesco customers.
The food donated to foodbanks 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 per cent top–up donation provided by Tesco helps the charities in their work by providing funding to run the foodbanks and distribute the food to those in need.
Lindsay Boswell, chief executive officer at FareShare, thanked Tesco customers for their generosity.
He 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 had enough long-life food to provide more than 900,000 meals.
“We’d like to thank everyone who donated, as well as all the volunteers who made the store collections such a success.”
Samantha Stapley, operations manager at The Trussell Trust, added:“Our foodbank network spent December making sure that people referred to them with no money for food don’t go hungry at Christmas.
“This work has been made possible thanks to the incredible generosity of Tesco customers, store colleagues and volunteers during the food collection.
“Thank you for your support - your generosity has stopped hunger this Christmas.”