By Isabel Hines, Year 9
Throughout December, form 9S decided to collect non-perishable food items to donate to the Bay Food Bank. We planned to donate the food just a few days before Christmas, however too much food was being donated! On 11th January, six students went to donate the food in North Shields.
The Bay Food Bank is situated in North Shields. It was set up in 2012 and has delivered over 170,000 meals to those desperately in need. The food bank itself is a mini-warehouse which is full to the brim of food. We didn’t realise how much food we had collected until we emptied it all out into the trolleys provided.
Alan, the chairman, gave us a talk about how he came to creating the food bank. Sadly, he told us that sometimes people in our area can’t even afford a cheap loaf of bread. Therefore, people are referred to the Bay Food Bank by churches and charities – you can’t just turn up asking for food! Listening to Alan talk made us realise how lucky we are to be able to afford a weekly shop.
Overall we all had a really good time! It was all very interesting to see how much food they have and all of the food packages being made and being sent off to those in need.
The Bay Food Bank contacted us on 11th January with the following message:
Hello everyone at St Thomas More Academy,
A big ‘thank you’ for all your wonderful donations we received today here at The Bay Foodbank!
We appreciate every donation we receive, and as we helped to feed over 4394 adults, 1846 children and 138 babies from April 2016 to March 2017 hopefully this demonstrates just how vital every donation is and how much we welcome your support.
Kind regards,
Bay Food Bank
