Today, Lucy met with the Fareshare Midlands CEO, Simone Connolly at the All Nations Community Grocery Store in Ketley.
Fareshare do vital work to provide local charities with affordable surplus food which would otherwise go to waste. Last year in Telford they worked with ten local charities to deliver the equivalent of 878,5010 meals.
Given the rising cost of living and the inflationary pressure that many families in our community are facing, the work done by Fareshare is crucial to support people experiencing increasing shortfalls in their household budgets.
Lucy spoke to Simone about how the government can support Fareshare’s efforts to distribute surplus food across 8,500 food charities across the country.
The All Nations Community Grocery in Ketley takes four Fareshare deliveries a week, ensuring local residents have good quality and affordable food. The grocery provides for over 5,000 members. On an average day around 130 people shop at the Grocery Store. The Community Grocery is run by Sarah Kaul in partnership with The Message Trust and All Nations Church, and in addition to offering affordable groceries, the shop offers wrap around support in different ways to the community. This includes a weekly coffee morning and cookery classes, mental health and wellbeing courses, a job club and arts and crafts and a debt management course.
You can find out more about what’s going on at the community grocery here. The team is staffed almost entirely by volunteers. If you’d like to help out Sarah and her team, you can sign up here here.
Lucy Allan MP said:
“It’s vital that we do all we can to support Fareshare in their efforts to distribute surplus food to as many people as possible. Food waste particularly in the current climate is something we can all do more to tackle. The rising cost of living means that many households depend on these sources of affordable and healthy food. It was wonderful to visit Sarah and her volunteers to see how they utilise Fareshare deliveries to support our community.”
