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!