School holidays can be a worrying time if you’re struggling to feed a family. The fact that many children face hunger when schools break up has featured heavily in the news and across social media in recent weeks, thanks largely to Marcus Rashford. Marcus Rashford’s high-profile campaign called for the government to extend free school meal provision to cover the half term holidays. While this plea was rejected by the government, it was embraced by local communities all over the country.
Here at Wetherby and District Foodbank, we’ve seen a massive surge in donations over the past few weeks. The generosity of local people has really been amazing. From individuals to clubs, groups, organisations and businesses: our community has recognised the hardship many families are facing and has stepped up to help. Donations have come from the annual Harvest Festival collections held by local schools and churches, but also remarkably this year, from what we’ve called the ‘Marcus Rashford Effect’.
The result? Our warehouse is now awash with incredibly generous donations – so many, in fact, that we’re actually close to the limit of our storage capacity. It can be a tricky task to manage the flow of food and other essentials in and out of our warehouse. We plan ahead as much as we can and generally know what times of year will see an upsurge in need. While our shelves are full now, come the New Year we’re anticipating a greater need than ever. The people we help are facing the combined effects of the global pandemic, redundancies, rising food costs and winter fuel bills. And school holidays. And Christmas. This puts even the essentials in life out of reach for many.
And this is where you can help. If your business, organisation, club or group is thinking of holding a collection for us, be this food or funds, could you contact us first? If we can work together to manage your collection, we can better ensure that your generosity is timed to help those who need it most.
The Marcus Rashford Effect drew on the vast well of compassion that lies in communities up and down the country. Our task is to harness this as best we can. We want our community to be ready to help those in need, when they need us.
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Find out more about what the Trussell trust have to say about Marcus Rashford’s campaign, here.
