Ramadan Collection by Zainabiya Islamic Centre

Last Saturday saw the delivery of an amazing amount of food that was collected by the Zainabiya Islamic Centre at Granby during Ramadan.

I was invited along at the start of Ramadan to do a short talk about the work of The Food Bank in one of their services. Arnie and I were both made to feel most welcome and were invited to share in the meal that was prepared for everyone after sundown.

Zainab, who works as part of the youth group for the Mosque made all the arrangements for my original talk and also arranged for a group of their young ladies to come along last Saturday to deliver the food and help sort the donations and make up food parcels. I really enjoyed meeting everyone and learning a little more about Ramadan and the Eid celebrations.

It is great that the work of The Food Bank can cut through any artificial boundaries of politics or religion and that we can all unite behind a common cause - to fight hunger and to make sure that nobody in our city goes to be hungry.

Our new Fridge Freezer!

Today The Food Bank took delivery of a fantastic Bosch Fridge Freezer, courtesy of local company BSH Home Applicances Ltd.

The fridge/ freezer will be greatly appreciated by our many volunteers who give their time so freely working in our warehouse. It will also give us the opportunity of taking in the occasional donation that requires refrigeration or freezing, which in the past we have had to turn away.

It seems quite ironic that in the last 7 days we have had our gas blower heating installed in the warehouse to heat us up and a fridge freezer to keep things cool!

Many thanks to my contact Zelia Pittam at BSH who made this possible!

A Busy Few Weeks!

The beginning of September has been a busy but productive time for The Food Bank.

Since the 1st September, I have presented to 3 Parish Councils, all of which have been kind enough to provide funding to help support our essential running costs - so a big THANK YOU to the following Parish / Town councils:


Walton Parish Council,







Bradwell Parish Council









Wolverton & Greenleys Town Council. This maintains our 100% record of support from Parishes accross MK.





We have also had some great press coverage in both the MK News and the Citizen. The Citizen will be running an article each week for 4 weeks on the run up to the Mercedes-Benz supported Food collection in Midsummer Place on 1st / 2nd October.

Thankfully Harvest Festival is just around the corner and again The Food Bank has been busy with school assemblies and talks in Church Services. Volunteer Helen Dray, did her first Church Service talk last Sunday at Mursely Church and today did her first assembly at Stoke Goldington CE First School - so well done Helen!

The demand is completely outsripping supply at the moment with 2733 food parcels given out already this year - 50% up on the same period last year. Our stocks are really very low so the injection of food that will come in as a result of Harvest Festival is very much needed.

We also had our warehouse heater installed this week - you probably heard the large shout of HOORAY from our volunteers!

This has been made possible by a grant from the Milton Keynes Community Foundation and a generous private donation.

That's all for now folks - keep watching this space for more Food Bank news.

Sue Adkins Last Day!

Yesterday saw the final day for our Team Leader Sue Adkins, who has sadly had to give up her role due to family commitments.

Sue has been our Team Leader, on a voluntary basis, for the last two years and has been involved in the amazing expansion that we have seen over that time. Sue spent much of her time working in our old sea container which was not a pleasant place to work at all - hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. Sue was also there through thick and thin with the snowy weather for the last two winters - pushing trolleys across a snow covered carpark!

Sue helped with the move to our new warehouse and has been instrumental in helping get the whole operation at Stacey Bushes up and running.

The whole team pooled together and gave her a good send off with a spoof Emergency Box full of all the food items she really does not like, but also a pamper box with some very nice goodies and some vouchers for Whittlebury Hall Spa.

Sue will certainly be greatly missed by all those who volunteer at The Food Bank and we all wish her every happiness in whatever life has in store.

Thanks Sue

The BIG little Give & our Vision Team

Last night was the first meeting of our newly formed Vision Team. The team is made up of a real mix of people from different backgrounds, ages and cultures but all of whom have a passion to help The Food Bank serve our local community.

It was a GREAT meeting!!!!

The Vision Team are focussing on planning our big event - The BIG little Give - which will take place between 21st - 27th March 2011. The aim of the event is to encourage every household in Milton Keynes to donate one item from the Food Bank shopping list.

Local donation points will be set up accross the city to make it easy for everyone to donate locally. There will also be many other events running during the week so hopefully there will be something that will appeal to everyone to encourage them to take part and support The Food Bank.

Full details will appear on our website shortly but if you would like to join a great team to help organise a great event then e-mail Sue on thefoodbank@mkcc.org.uk or call on 01908 322800

Thank you Shenley Brook End & Tattenhoe Parish Council

Last night The Food Bank presented a grant application to Shenley Brook End & Tattenhoe Parish Council requesting their support to help continue to fund our essential service whilst we strive to make ourselves sustainable.

Fantastic news - the Grant application for £1500 was approved - THANK YOU!

This is the second time that Shenley Brook End & Tattenhoe PC have supported The Food Bank. Last year they also assisted with initial funding to help us raise the money to take on our warehouse. The following Parish Councils also assisted at this time:

• Campbell Park PC
• Bradwell PC
• New Bradwell PC
• Woughton PC
• Bradwell Abbey PC
• Stony Stratford Town Council
• Stantonbury PC
• Great Linford PC
• Bletchley & Fenny Stratford Town Council

West Bletchley Parish Council have also supported The Food Bank this year with a donation to fund 100 food parcels for local people.

It is great that the Parish Councils are willing to support our work as The Food Bank provides an essential service to residents within every Parish in the Milton Keynes area.

Together we really can make a difference.......

Woburn Sands Co-op

Last weekend Brian Kirkland - manager of the Woburn Sands Co-op, invited The Food Bank back to hold a second supermarket collection on the 7th / 8th August. This followed the first very successful collection in April this year.

The collection point was manned by volunteers - many of them living in the Woburn / Woburn Sands area. Our volunteers offered the Co-op customers a Food Bank shopping list as they entered the store and invited them to help by buying one extra item as they shopped from our shopping list. 4 items were highlighted as being those most urgently needed to balance our stocks - tinned tuna, dried rice, jam and sugar. In just two 5 hours sessions, the Co-op customers donated a massive 406 separate items which was a fantastic increase on the collection in April and many were the items we most desperately needed!

Brian has kindly invited us back for another two day collection on 4th/5th December. Thanks a million to Brian, all his staff, customers and not forgetting our faithful volunteers who made the day such a success!

A week of visitors

How ridiculous - a blog to show our latest exciting news and yet we have had so much exciting news I have been too busy to update the blog!

Hopefully you will all have received our interim news letter sent out last week which covered some of the amazing provision which has taken place in the last 4 weeks. If you haven't received this and would like to then please click on the join our mailing list link on the website or download a copy in pdf. format which should be available on the website by the end of this week at the latest.

Last week The Food Bank had some very interesting visitors starting with The Rt Revd Alan Wilson - Bishop of Buckingham. Bishop Alan visited on Wednesday and spent three hours at our warehouse, learning about our work, our plans for the future and then praying with our volunteers - a very special morning.

On Friday morning we had Mark Lancaster, MP for Milton Keynes North come along to see what we do and in the afternoon Iain Stewart, MP for Milton
Keynes South came and visited. Both were very interested in what we do and were keen to help us to raise the profile of our work which will hopefully encourage more donations of both food and funds. So altogether a very interesting week!

I do plan to make a concerted effort to blog daily as there is just so much going on at the moment that it is a very exciting time for us so please - watch this space!

An amazing two weeks!

I can't believe where the time has gone since I last blogged! Only two weeks, but so much has happened in this time that I don't know where to start.

It has certainly been extremely busy. Our last two serving sessions at Milton Keynes Christian Centre have seen 76 food parcels given out. The other centres have also been very busy and all together The Food Bank has given out 1385 parcels to date in 2010.

On 30th April, Judith Evans from Guinness Midsummer visited The Food Bank and awarded us £2000 towards the set-up and running costs of our new warehouse. This was greatly appreciated and will go to support our exciting expansion programme which will enable us to better serve our community.

Sunday 2nd May was Food Bank Sunday at MKCC where our congregation focused on 6 main items to help re-balance our stock and also gave a financial donation to help support the service. The day was a great success with plenty of food donations and £670 in financial donations.

Last Saturday, 8th May, was our first Food Bank Open Day at the new warehouse. We were open for just 4 hours, but during that time almost 80 people came to see what we do and to learn more about our vision for expansion in order to better serve our community.
Some of our younger visitors helped our volunteers to make up some food parcels in readiness for our Monday serving session and also took part in a short quiz.

During the open day, Sainsbury's (Central Milton Keynes) Store Manager Nick Wynne presented The Food Bank with a cheque for £1000 - which was totally unexpected but very much appreciated! This amount represents the last of the fund raising from the period when Food Bank were their local Charity of the Year. It has been a truly great year with Sainsbury's and I cannot thank Nick and his team enough for their support in so many ways.

We now hope that we will again be nominated for a second year so please cast your vote in store before next Wednesday 19th May.

A Great Weekend

Last weekend saw the first Food Bank supermarket collection in Woburn Sands and it was a great success!

Many thanks to Anne Bircham who opened up the disucssions with Brian Kirkland - Manager at the Co-op and of course to Brian and all his team and their customers who made the collection such a success.

None of this would have been possible without the many local volunteers who gave up their time to offer customers one of our shopping lists to encourage them to buy one extra item and to donate on their way out. Altogether, almost 450 items of food were donated, which is a massive help to us at such a busy time.

Talking about busy - yesterday was one of our busiest days with 21 separate families coming to The Food Bank for help in just the one hour that we are open!

We are still learning how many bags to make up and take to MKCC on our serving days and yesterday we underestimated and had to "mix and match" to ensure everyone received their parcels. In fact two families decided to go to CrossLinks today instead, as we would have been unable to provide their full allocation yesterday!

To ensure this does not happen again, Deanna is frantically bagging up food parcels as I am typing - what a great team I have.

Enjoy the sunshine and keep reading.

A busy few days

The Food Bank is fortunate to have so many supporters who make it possible to provide the service we do to our local community.

Last Sunday I was invited to do a talk at Olney Baptist Church in their Sunday service. Their congregation are great supporters of The Food Bank with a collection point in their Church which gets filled to overflowing and is then delivered to our warehouse by Chris & Sue Hanson.

Last week we also received the good news that we were successful in our bid to get £1000 from the Sports Relief funding towards our warehouse set up costs. This is truly great news.

We also had confirmation from G4S that we can park our vehicle in their secure compound overnight and at weekends, which is truly a blessing as it really was too large to keep outside my house!

Today I am off to St Thomas Church at Simpson as their "guest speaker to one of their social groups - it is always great to meet different people and to share our work with them.

Have a great day everyone and keep watching this space!

A week of lasts & firsts!

Thursday 15th was another first - it was the first time that we had to transport our food parcels from our new warehouse to Milton Keynes Christian Centre for our serving session between 11am & 12 noon.

Sue & Helen had spent the previous day getting settled in to our new home and also bagging up enough food parcels to ensure we would not run out, as we no longer have the luxury of making more bags up on site - everything now has to be transported in and out for each session.

Everyone was at the warehouse by 9.30am and we had loaded "Vicky" (the van) by 10am and were on site at MKCC by 10.15am to unload. We even had time for a quick cuppa before opening the doors to our service users!

We are now using plastic totes to put the made up bags in which does make things easier. One lesson we did learn was not to overload the totes as by the end of the serving session those that had not been given out felt a whole lot heavier than they did at the start of the day!

Considering it was the first time we had done this, it went really well and I am sure we will fine tune things over the next few weeks.

Thank you to everyone who has made this possible and to everyone who supports The Food Bank in any way, whether it be financially, with food donations or time - as without you it would not be possible to serve our community and to make the difference that we do in peoples lives.

The Big Move!

Yesterday was The Big Move when The Food Bank finally moved its office and storage facility off site from Milton Keynes Christian Centre to our new warehouse at Stacey Bushes.

Volunteers Claudia & Beth Payne students from Thornton College who are helping with The Food Bank as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme brought the brains, whilst "old" regulars Leon & Arnie (nothing to do with age - honest!) brought the brawn.

We quickly emptied the sea container into "Vicky" our new van, managing to do it in just one trip. What a joy it is to have a large vehicle for our use at any time and one that looks so good.

Team work is a great thing and by 4.30pm all the food that had been brought from the sea container had been sorted, put away in the correct place and also a complete stock check carried out. Not only was a lot achieved in the day but we had a great time doing it - thank you to everyone who took part.

Monday 12th April- our last bagging day in the Sea container

Monday 12th April was a historic day - it was the last day that we will ever make food parcels up in the Sea Container.

Helen did us all proud by bringing in balloons, signs and a very lovely home baked chocolate cake to mark the occasion.

It was certainly a very busy day with food parcels made up for CrossLinks, New Life Church, 10 emergency boxes for the MK Floating Support Team as well as bags for our own serving session.

The sea container has been a real blessing to The Food Bank for the last few years as it has given us the space to operate from and I am very grateful to George Ridley and LightForce International for letting us use their space. However I am sure I speak for all our volunteers when I say that we will not miss it for too long when we move into the fantastic space of our new warehouse!

Watch this space for further updates!

I can't believe where the time has gone since I last blogged!

Arnie & I went out to Uganda for most of February with LightForce International (the international missions arm of our Church) and had an amazing time carrying out surveys with the local community on the service provided by their health centres. We look forward to returning in January 2011.

Since returning, so much has happened at The Food Bank that my feet have barely touched the ground.

On 1st March we took delivery of our new vehicle - a Mercedes Sprinter - only made possible by a joint sponsorship deal with Mortgage Rescue Network and Mercedes Benz. As you can see from the photos the vehicle is absolutely fantastic!

We have also made great headway in getting the racking installed at the warehouse and we now plan to move in on 13th April.

It will be so wonderful to have some space to work in after so long in the sea container!

I do plan to blog more regularly now so do watch this space.

What a fantastic month!

When I last blogged, I mentioned that I was going to see some racking that Sainsbury's were donating to us. Since then the racking - which turned out to be fantastic supermarket shelving - has been delivered. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the size of the truck that delivered it! Altogether we have 16 pallets of racking which will be assembled early March with our hope to have the warehouse up and running by early April.

This month has also seen a wonderful joint sponsorship by Mortgage Rescue Network (Part of the Rapid Property Group) and Mercedes-Benz. This relationship will provide the funding and ongoing servicing / maintenance for a 57 plate Mercedes Sprinter van which will enable us to start our Mobile Food Bank. All being well we will take delivery of the vehicle on 1st March - watch this space for further updates.

I certainly hope that February is as exciting!

Racking

I am so excited! At the end of last year Sainsbury's very kindly offered to help us by donating some racking that we can use in our warehouse and said that it would be available in the middle of January.

Well that time has now come - and tomorrow I am heading up the motorway to sunny Longridge (although it is probably more like snowy Longridge!) to see what they have available and to decide what we need.

The racking is absolutely essential to us as once it is in place, we can then move our storage and packing operation to the warehouse which will be fantastic!

Here's hoping that there's no more snow tonight and a clear run up the M6!

A Belated Happy New Year!

Where has the time gone! I just can't believe that it is 11th January already!

The Food Bank certainly had a very busy December with many local companies, schools, Churches and individuals holding special Christmas food collections resulting in a wonderful influx of stock. Many thanks to all those who contributed.

The Food Bank also managed to get 98 Christmas Hampers sponsored which made a massive difference to those families who received one.

By the end of 2009 The Food Bank had given out 3104 food parcels to local people. Sadly the need in our city continues to rise and 2010 has started out very busy.

The cold weather has put an added strain on everyone. Thankfully, despite all the snow, we have been able to open on each of our serving days which is entirely down to the willingness of our fantastic team of volunteers.

We have a really exicting year ahead of us with the prosepct of getting our warehouse up and running and also starting a mobile food bank - so watch this space for further updates.

Stay warm and safe