East Yorkshire Foodbank Appeal For Help And Support Of New Incentive

East Yorkshire Foodbank is appealing for help to find more storage following what they say was a successful Christmas campaign.

Following an increase in food poverty in the area the charity says the response from their public appeal resulted in an influx of food parcels.

During the season of goodwill, they saw a generous public donate twice the amount of food as they did the previous year.

Annemarie Foster said;

“We know that typically donations drop off after the Christmas period.  So we set a target to bring in enough to help the people who rely on us for food until the Spring.”

“As a result, it is such a wonderful feeling to be able to say we have enough food to take us past our target and we no longer need to worry about running out.”

Annemarie says that all those who are involved with the charity are delighted with the amount of food donated. She adds that due to the response they need additional space to store the food.

She said;

“Unfortunately, our facility does not allow us to store this amount of food. Now we are hoping a business based in Beverley will have an area we can use. It needs to be secure, watertight, insured and based locally. This is  so that we can easily transport the stock between sites.”

East Yorkshire Foodbank Impressed With Young People Who Supported Them

The East Yorkshire Foodbank also add they were happy to see the younger generation in the town support their cause.

She added;

“A student from Longcroft School came along with her donations all pre-sorted into bags for us to hand out.”

 Another gentleman filled two supermarket trollies, spending over £200. He said he was going to give the receipt to his Mother for Christmas as a gift.

“Also a group of soldiers from the MOD at Leconfield brought us a massive collection worth a few hundred pounds.”

The charity is now switching their attention to raising money which will help them continue their work.

To do this they have launched the 200 Club which is looking to get 200 people to donate just £5 a month to sustain the work they do.

UN Says Government In A State Of Denial When It Comes To Poverty

Annemarie added;

“This level of income will help us to budget effectively and demonstrate to potential funders that our Foodbank is sustainable.”

Food Poverty in Beverley and the East Riding continues to grow. In the past two years, there has been a 20pc increase in the number of people accessing Foodbanks locally.

Charities say an element of the increase is being caused by the controversial Universal Credit scheme being rolled out by the Conservative government. 

In November the UN was highly critical of the UK Government. They said that austerity has inflicted ‘great misery’ on citizens.

Philip Alston, the UN’s rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights found that 14 million people were living in poverty. As a result, his findings were described as a ‘wake-up call’ yet the Government dismissed the findings.

Mr Alston also said the UK government were in a state of denial adding there was a striking disconnect between what Ministers said and testimonies of people he met.