October has flown by in the blink of an eye and it’s been a super busy one for us here at Billingham and Stockton Foodbanks.
Beyond our regular work of providing emergency food to local people and families in need, we’ve also been coordinating our Harvest Festival, moved our food storage warehouse from Billingham to new premises in Stockton, visited lots of schools, welcomed school groups to the Foodbank and met a couple of new volunteers too!
Get comfy and grab a brew to keep reading and enjoy a summary of our latest news.
Harvest Festival
October is not only the month for crunchy leaves and the clocks going back, it’s also Harvest time and it’s been a bumper few weeks of lots of activity!
Working alongside local schools and churches who have kindly collected donations for the Foodbank, we have attended school assemblies to give talks about the work we do, we have welcomed school groups into the Foodbank for an experience hour and we’ve even attended an all-day student conference at Ian Ramsey C of E School where we delivered workshops to students from years 10 and 11 about the role the Foodbank plays in our local community.
We’ve had some fabulous feedback and we’ve shared lots of photos of children helping us out with our daily tasks. You can enjoy more of those on our Facebook page. If you’re not already following us on there, give us a like to see what else we get up to each week.
The big warehouse move
Our food storage warehouse has now moved from Billingham to new premises in Stockton. Thanks to our Warehouse Manager, Billy, our warehouse and driver volunteers and multiple teams of corporate volunteers from Johnson Matthey, the move was super efficient.
Over a few days last week, the team all worked together to empty the old unit and move the stock across to the new unit. Our corporate volunteers loved doing something different with their day and really got into the task! Thank you so much to them all – your help was invaluable.
Our Foodbanks are still located in Billingham town centre and at Hebron Church in Stockton. If you are a regular donator, you can drop items off at Billingham on a Monday to Thursday between 9am and 1pm.
Hello to our new volunteers
Our volunteers are the heart of our Foodbank hubs and we’re so grateful to everyone who joins us each week, we really couldn’t do it without you!
At Billingham this month we have welcomed two new volunteers, Andy and David, who are learning the ropes, meeting other volunteers and understanding how they can help to support our clients.
If you would like to find out more about our volunteers or are considering it for yourself, please visit the Volunteers page on our website.
Coming soon
Christmas collections
We know it’s only just the end of October, but Christmas will soon be here and we will be collecting donations to support local people in need. We’ll be sharing our Christmas food shopping list soon, here on our website and on our social media too.
Knit one, purl one
We have some very talented people who donate to us and this has recently included the most amazing winter warmer hats – toasty. The hats are so fab that we have started a knitting table for people to pop down, choose a hat and make a donation in our tin to help support local people in need.
Next time you’re in the town centre pop in to see us at Billingham Foodbank, near Boyes, to have a look for yourself. Our knitting table will be available on Wednesdays from 9am to 1pm for you to call in and say hello.
If you knit or crochet and would like to contribute to our table, we would love to hear from you. Drop us an email or send us a message on our Facebook page.
Read all about it
We regularly receive books and would love to set up a table somewhere for people to choose their next read and make a donation in our tin. All donations will help us to continue supporting local people and families in need.
If you know a good location or have a store in mind that might be the perfect place, please let us know. You can send us an email or message us on our Facebook page.
Thank you for reading and see you again next month for some November news!