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.