Food For Thought

Our employer gives us a day a year to volunteer supporting a need of our choice. There are facilities for organisations to make details of the support they need visible to us so we can search by location or type of activity for example to find something that suits. I (Chris) always try to pick something different each year and chose to help at a food bank in Milton Keynes today.

Food banks were something I knew about through media reports and I wanted to offer my help whilst taking an opportunity to learn more about how they work. Both of these aspirations were met and working with a bunch of other volunteers who had similarly been given the time by their employers, we were able to bring lots of extra hands to quite a lot of manual tasks. There was sorting by types of food, by expiry dates followed by much boxing up and wrapping. We created some Christmas parcels which were food and some gifts. Some went out to hand out parcels at a centre in MK, the rest of us tackled a huge amount of new stock donated by the public in supermarkets in the city.

Ultimately it was a rewarding day and good to understand how it works. The thing that stuck with me was the statistic that despite Milton Keynes being seen as a successful city, nearly one in five children live in an environment where the household income is below the UK poverty line. Food banks are only a very temporary solution, a qualifying individual or family can only access the food bank 7 times in the year.

I drove home and watched the sun setting, a good chance to reflect and grab a photo on the way.