Farringdon Gurney is a small village of about 1100 people which punches above their weight in terms of social provision.Today’s talks were about seed provision and discussing certain local services. The hall was full, quite encouraging on a blustery day.
Giving away seeds from local inhabitants.
Françoise bought some seeds, lovingly packaged up
Farringdon Gurney is thinking of having a community food fridge. Food facilities such as this are very useful for serving the population in general apart from significantly reducing waste from supermarkets. The original idea was to feed the starving and destitute but this line seems to have soft somewhat. It is now a facility for everyone.
In 2022/23 there were 1,646 food bank distribution centers run by the the UK’s main foodbank distributor, the Trussell Trust, compared with 1,588 in the previous year. In this year 2.99 million people used a foodbank in the UK, compared with 2.19 million in 2021/22.9 May 2023
At the talk there were two organizers from Shepton Mallet community fridge which for locals who don’t know the location, it is opposite the big Tesco’s to the right of Screwfix. In the Shepton group they have 24 volunteers not all of whom are active but can be called on in times of emergency.
The jobs of the volunteers are as follows
# Collect the food from the various outlets at an agreed time
# Load the food in the fridges
# Keep the fridges clean which involves a session and opening and closing time.
Normal opening hours are between about eight thirty AM when the first food delivery arrives and 9.30 PM depending on when the last load arrives
# one of the volunteers needs to arrange a monthly rota
The speakers said that the community fridge was for use by anyone, people who needed it through not being able to afford their own food. For some that were embarrassed, I noted that the Shepton Mallet fridge was situated in a discrete corner where people could not see what you were doing.
They are lucky that local businesses pay for the electricity.
The arrangement works out very well for all parties because supermarkets get fined if they throw away more than a certain amount and they feel good because they are helping the community. Those in difficulty get help and there is less food taken to the tip. I commented to all that ‘everybody is a winner’.
The locals hope that there will be a food fridge here in Farringdon Gurney very soon and, led by such keen personalities, this will probably manifest within a few months, Communications are via a Facebook Group. Shepton Mallet Community Fridge
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