Somer Valley Foodbank has received a much-needed financial boost thanks to a £3,500 grant through Quartet Community Foundation. The funding will help the foodbank continue its work supporting local people in crisis.

The Foodbank – which operates from centres in Midsomer Norton, Radstock, Paulton and Peasedown St John – has more than seventy active volunteers and relies on voluntary food donations. Their only expenses are the cost of paying for a warehouse to store the donations and maintaining a van to distribute the goods to the four foodbanks, and that’s where the grant will really make a difference.

Sue Turner, Chief Executive of Quartet Community Foundation, said: “Anyone can reach crisis point, and it’s important organisations such as Somer Valley Foodbank are here to help when that happens.

“We are delighted that the grant will help feed local people and also offer a friendly welcome, emergency food and encouragement to find solutions to problems so people can move out of crisis.”

Quartet Community Foundation is an independent charity working across Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire to support local philanthropists to give around £3m in grants each year, helping thousands of frontline charitable organisations to provide services and projects for communities across the region. Quartet grants support disadvantaged people to enrich local lives, connect people and build stronger communities.

All four Foodbanks rely on the work of committed volunteers such as Paul Woodward, Manager of Somer Valley Foodbank. Paul says: “I want to give something back – lots of us are retired, and have time to give. We’re trying to get people out of a crisis.

“We’ve had a few tears from people coming through the doors. We offer a cup of tea, a listening ear, they might want to talk or they may just want to get the food and get out.

“People are referred by the Citizens Advice Bureau, DHI, schools and housing associations and they are all given a leaflet (showing them where to get help with benefits, debt advice, etc). Many come because of delays in their benefits.”

Volunteer, Claire, worked at Nationwide for thirty years, and could see that some of her clients were under financial pressures.

Now retired, she wants to do something to help. She said: “I like chatting to people, making up the orders. You do get to know people if you see them a few times. I feel humble working here. I tell all my family they should give their time to help others, I’m trying to educate people.”

Paul continued: “We ask clients if they are vegetarian, if there is anything they can’t have or don’t like, if they have pets, and then start packing.

“We offer them tea and cake, and they can select some ‘help yourself’ items, too. There are also some toiletries, sanitary products, and other cleaning products.

“On a Monday here in Midsomer Norton, we’ll see between five and eight people in crisis. At Christmas, this can go up to fifteen people each week. This year, we had more people coming during the school summer holidays, so next year, we are going to do two annual collections at Tesco, rather than one, to help us cope over the school summer holidays.”

In total, the four Foodbanks helped 1,907 people between April 2017 and March 2018. Paul said: “We need to keep four tonnes of food in the warehouse, and it recently went down to 2.4 tonnes. This is emergency food for local people, so we need to keep the supplies up.”

The next few weeks will be busy for the Foodbank, as they will be out asking for extra donations to boost supplies and expect to see increased numbers of people coming through their doors each week who need support in the run-up to Christmas.

Editor: The Foodbank would like to say a great big thank you to Journal readers, who, after seeing last week’s article, helped to make the weekend’s collection at Tesco the best ever!