Food charity receives largest ever donation

POVERTY CAMPAIGNER IN CALL FOR MORE HELP FROM LOCAL BUSINESSES

THE Cedarwood Trust, a North Shields food poverty charity, has received its largest donation ever from recruitment firm Visuna.

Through their ‘Can for a Candidate’ campaign, Visuna donated an item of food to Cedarwood, on the Meadow Well Estate, for every single person they have placed into work in the past year.

With more than 1,400 roles filled, Visuna committed to donating that many items of food, but on the day, staff from the company turned up with 2,000 products for the charity’s Nourish Store.

This food membership scheme, where customers are able to access reduced-price food and household goods, with 550 active members across the North East who rely on it to feed their families.

This welcome news comes as a recent survey shows people living in the region are more likely to need help buying food than anywhere else in the UK.

But Cedarwood’s CEO Wayne Dobson says although the donation is a boost for the charity, it needs more long term support from local businesses to keep feeding their customers.

He said: “This a massive step forward for Cedarwood, for a long time we have been without many corporate supporters, and Visuna are not just bringing donations today, they have made a longterm commitment to us.

“We want to say a huge thank you to everyone at Visuna for getting involved and putting their money where their mouth is, it is a business helping to make a real difference to people living in food poverty.

“These 1400-plus items will go into our Nourish Store to help feed the community, providing enough items to fill the baskets of 106 people. However, we have an average of almost 50 shoppers per day, so the food won’t last long! We need more support from the community and businesses to help us to what we do, to help battle food insecurity across the North East.”

David Bolton, chief operating officer at Visuna, added: “I met Wayne at a networking event and was so impressed with what he said about what Cedarwood was doing I just had to see it for myself. “I could straight away see the difference it is making to people; we just had to do something to help them. We had already announced our ‘Can for a Candidate’ campaign, and decided that instead of donating produce to a food bank, we’d give it to Cedarwood. The team is doing such a fantastic job and deserves to be supported by the local business community.”

We have an average of almost 50 shoppers per day so the food won’t last long!