The sad news is that it looks as if December could break previous records in respect of the number of meals we have supplied – and that is NOT good – especially for the families caught up in these crises.
The good news is that the month saw tremendous generosity from all our donors.
We kicked off with three days at Tesco extra at Kew where, admirably supported by Lesley and the staff there, we almost hit our record weight of food collected coming in at a touch under 6 tonnes. (Tesco’s themselves add 20 % to this). We could not have achieved this without the support of the great children from Bishop David Sheppard School, the 58th Southport Brownies and Southport Sunrise Rotary Club members.
Thereafter the food and financial donations and grants continued apace throughout December from, among others:
- Co-op Local Causes Fund
- Airway Solutions Ltd (with a matching donation from Mitsubishi Ltd)
- Citizens Advice
- Chris Wright’s School of Dance and Drama
- Southport Under 14 Rugby Club
- Formby Labour Party
- Matthew Rycraft Photography
- Redgate Rovers Under 7’s , Formby
- Southport Labour Club
- Lucio Sergio BJJ Academy
- Champion Newspapers
- AccessPoint Ltd
- Payment Shield
- Southport College and Library
- St James Birkdale
- Sequirus,
- Schools making donations included: Farnborough Road Infants, Greenbank High, Holy Trinity Tarleton, Presfield, St Teresa’s Infants and Stanley High.
- Retirement and care homes such as Cherry Tree Lodge, Connell Court and Eton Court too collected food.
- Organisations and workplaces included Marie Curie, Sefton Council staff, Soroptomist International and Southport Lions.
- Shops and supermarkets such as Asda, various Co-op and Tesco stores and Waitrose have seen increased donation levels from their customers.
- We must not forget the wonderful support we get throughout the year from churches in the area and their congregations too have significantly increased their food collection donations in recent weeks.
Individual stories from donors as well as clients continued to humble us, the client parents in tears with relief and the children who have brought donations to Lakeside foregoing Christmas presents for themselves in order to provide food and gifts for children not as fortunate as themselves and not forgetting the Formby gentleman who gave his fuel allowance to Waitrose staff asking that, for the third year in succession, they should buy food to that value for us.
It is inevitable that in compiling this list we shall have inadvertently missed some donors – for that we apologise. But we value all donations, great and small. Without your support now and throughout the year we would not be able to be the channel for your help to local families that we are.
We haven’t yet totalled the food donations by weight. but using the yardstick of the state of the backs of our volunteers in the Warehouse at Lakeside, we must be at or exceeding record levels.
Santa himself, despite being so busy himself in the run-up to Christmas, did send one of his elves on the Friday before Christmas to collect the food donations from the overflowing box in the Southport Asda store and deliver it to us at Lakeside. 