Plea for ‘No Easter eggs just essentials’ from food banks as demand to support people in need continues to rise in Cambridgeshire

Posted by rob smyth | Published: 08/04/2020


‘No Easter eggs just essentials’ is the plea from food banks as donations continue to fall and demand spike due to the impact of the Coronavirus in Cambridgeshire.

Food banks across the country have urged kind-hearted people looking to donate in the run up to Easter not to hand over sweet treats but instead to focus on the vital food and essentials needed to create much-needed support packages for people in need at this time.

People looking to make a difference this Easter can make a donation to their local food bank by visiting their nearest Central England Co-op food store and dropping an item or two into special collection points.

Donations will be collected up from Central England Co-op stores and used to create food parcels, which contain around 11 items and will provide at least three days’ worth of meals for those in need.

Items needed for the food bank appeal include cereal, tinned food and fruit, tea bags, dried pasta, rice, long life milk, sugar, biscuits, fruit juice and squash, pasta sauce and instant coffee.

Food banks being supported by this appeal in Cambridgeshire include Cambridge City Food bank, Peterborough Food bank and Yaxley Food bank.

A spokesperson for St Neots Food Bank said: “We have now limited time to get Easter eggs out so they are not our first priority.

“The things we most need are things are tinned tomatoes or any tinned veg, tinned meat and fish and long-life milk.”

Chris Grant, from Yaxley Food Bank, said: “Our main need is for tinned fruit and tinned vegetables – especially tinned potatoes as we do not need anymore chocolate or eggs.”

Juliet Welch, from Peterborough Food Bank, said: “We do not want any eggs as what we really need is long life milk, tinned meat, tinned fruit and any other tinned item.”

This comes after kind-hearted communities donated over 30,000 items to Central England Co-op’s urgent food bank appeal in less than two weeks.

On average, food banks are seeing a 50% fall in donations coupled with a 100% rise in requests for food parcels with new enquiries coming from people who are self isolating, self employed and families who have children that would normally be getting free school meals.

People can keep up to date with how Central England Co-op is responding to the Coronavirus by visiting www.centralengland.coop/updates

 

Notes to editors

About Central England Co-operative

 

Central England Co-operative is one of the largest independent retail co-operative societies in the UK with interests in food, funeral, floral, travel and property investment.

 

Co-operatives have always been there for their communities; they were formed to protect them and help them flourish. 

 

Our 7,900 colleagues who serve Members and customers work hard to ensure that co-operative values, principles and spirit flow through everything we do to help support and improve our local communities.

 

Owned by hundreds of thousands of Members, we have over 430 trading outlets across 16 counties including West Midlands, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Nottinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. 

 

We are proud of our reputation for ethical business practices and corporate responsibility.

 

We invest a percentage of our trading profit into local communities through our Community Dividend Fund scheme, have donated over £1.3 million to our corporate charity partner Dementia UK and also operate a pioneering food redistribution partnership with FareShare Midlands so unsold food goes to those in need.

 

Visit www.centralengland.coop for more information or follow us on Facebook or Twitter using @mycoopfood

 

 

Press office contacts: Rob Smyth and James Brindle

 

Phone - 01543 421390

 

Email - publicrelations@centralengland.coop