Our 3 day collection at Tesco last week was a tremendous success and we had almost 6 tonnes of food donated by customers at Southport Tesco extra. Not only that, their donations will be increased 20% by Tesco themselves so the effective total was over 7 tonnes of food.
Our volunteers returned from Tesco with heartwarming tales of individual generosity and with personal stories which had been shared with them by customers.
To mount such an operation as this requires help from so many people and we are fortunate to have this support from across the community.
We always receive great help from Lesley and her colleagues at the Tesco store and in handing out leaflets and taking cash donations we were supported by pupils of Bishop Sheppard School and the 58th Southport Brownies, all of whom were delightful. and such a help. The Mayor of Sefton too showed his support and our regular supporters, Southport Sunrise Rotary turned out to help too. 
Our van, purchased with significant help from the Co-op Local Causes fund, performed brilliantly as it transported the food from Kew to our Lakeside warehouse for weighing, sorting, labelling and sorting where we were helped by staff from Payments Shield.
We are blessed with a great band of volunteers who turn up week in, week out to keep our operation going and who always put in hundreds of extra hours at this time of the year to efficiently handle the seemingly boundless supply of food which comes to us.
We thank each and every person who helped our local families by their efforts
As a footnote, we were in the warehouse at Lakeside on the Thursday of the collection, handling the first of the donations when there was a tap on the door. Opening it, there were two ladies there. They wished to stay anonymous and wouldn’t allow any pictures to be taken but they handed over two very large boxes. Each of them had put one item in each day through November, making two hampers each suitable to be given to a local family who would otherwise be having a very miserable Christmas. If you happen to read this – thank you – we shall ensure they are suitably used.
And we left the Warehouse on Friday to a beautiful sunset over the Marine Lake
