THURROCK foodbank is growing fast and in the last twelve months has provided food for over 4,250 local people in crisis. There is already a great team in place but because the work continues to expand we now need more volunteers to make things happen and ensure we can supply food to those who need it within our borough.
More people are urgently needed to give some of their time to be part of the team and that means there are plenty of new volunteering opportunities with Thurrock foodbank. You can find out all about the different opportunities at our recruitment fair on 1st May at the Beehive and decide which role would be best for you.
Our current volunteer opportunities cover a wide range of skills and time commitments . Roles include working in our warehouse, stock control, helping at our distribution centres, being involved with (or heading up) our fundraising efforts, handyman, team leader at supermarket collection days, coordinating donations from schools or businesses, and being a foodbank champion in your workplace, church or neighbourhood.
There will be lots more information about all of these and more at our first Thurrock foodbank recruitment fair on Thursday 1st May from 5.00 – 7.30pm in the ground floor meeting room in The Beehive Centre, West Street, Grays RM17 6XP. It will be a drop-in evening, so please feel free to come along even if you can only stay for a short time.
It will be a great opportunity to meet the team, have some refreshments, find out more, and sign up. We hope to see as many people as possible there, so come along with your friends, pop in after work, or tell others to be there.
There is more information at thurrock.foodbank.org.uk
Ideal media opportunity for Jackie Doyle Price so she can show she is more in tune with the residents of Thurrock. Because the conservative government has made the situation that people need food banks, perhaps she can hold one of her surgeries their, also Jackie don’t forget to bring a large donation of food shopping because you can afford it on your salary, and then you can claim it as expenses
I thought Jackie Doyle Price voted against a debate in Parliment about foodbanks.
I can just see her now “You Thurrock Scum can starve to death”
I thought when you was an Member of Parliament your job was to help the rresidents that voted you in, so due to the cuts that this government have made which she is part of, they have turned a lot of area’s in England into third world communities what’s next do we ask Bob Geldof to start another llive aid to feed resident’s in the UK why MP ignore these problems and live off the fat expenses scam. These MP live in a completely different world to us plebs. Let them eat cake ?
The economic downturn has seen use of food banks in Britain increase dramatically in recent months. Photograph: Mercury Press & Media Ltd
The government has been accused of putting “anti-European ideology” before the needs of the most deprived people in society after Britain rejected help from a European Union fund to help subsidise the costs of food banks.
David Cameron, who was heavily criticised recently after Michael Gove blamed the rise in food banks on financial mismanagement by families, faced pressure to embark on a U-turn to allow EU funds to be spent on feeding the poor.
The government came under fire after British officials in Brussels said that the UK did not want to use money from a new £2.5bn fund – European Aid to the Most Deprived – to be used to help with the costs of running food banks. The use of food banks has increased dramatically in recent months, prompting Sir John Major to warn that the poor face a stark choice between paying for heating or food.
But British officials rejected EU funding for food banks, which could have reached £22m for Britain, on the grounds that individual member states are best placed to take charge of such funding.
A document from the Department of Work and Pensions explaining Britain’s position, which has been leaked to the Guardian, says: “The UK government does not support the proposal for a regulation on the fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived. It believes that measures of this type are better and more efficiently delivered by individual member states through their own social programmes, and their regional and local authorities, who are best placed to identify and meet the needs of deprived people in their countries and communities. It therefore questions whether the commission’s proposal is justified in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity.”
Richard Howitt, a Labour MEP who helped negotiate the new fund, accused the government of neglecting the needs of the poor. “It is very sad that our government is opposing this much-needed help for foodbanks on the basis that it is a national responsibility, when in reality it has no intention of providing the help itself. The only conclusion is that Conservative anti-European ideology is being put before the needs of the most destitute and deprived in our society.”
Howitt added that he hoped that a Westminster parliamentary debate on Wednesday would prompt a government U-turn. He said the debate “should be used to shame a government, which is taking food out of the mouths of the hungry, into a U-turn in time for Christmas”.
It is understood that in “trilogue” negotiations – between the European commission, the council of ministers and the European Parliament – British officials formed a blocking minority with three other EU member states to water down the fund which will run from 2014-2020. Under the original plans there would have been just one funding strand for the “distribution of material assistance” – sleeping bags and food. But Britain prompted the creation of a second funding strand known as “immaterial assistance” to cover counselling and budget maintenance but not food banks.
The position taken by UK officials means that Britain will draw down just €3.5m (£2.9m) from the fund compared with €443m for France which is around the same size as the UK. Britain is taking the same amount as Malta, the smallest EU member state with a population of 450,000.
The department for work and pensions said that Britain has not lost any money because the £22m would have come out of the UK’s EU structural fund pot. It said that ministers have not decided how to allocate the £2.9m earmarked for Britain from the fund, though this is expected to be spent on helping unemployed people find work.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We aren’t losing money – any funding the UK receives from the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived will be taken off our structural fund allocation. Instead we will use our structural funds to support local initiatives to train and support disadvantaged people into work. We have not yet decided how the €3.5m euro pot (£2.9m) will be spent – food aid is just one of the options for spending the money.”
Chris Mould, the executive chairman of Britain’s largest network of food banks, the Trussell Trust, told the Guardian: “We would welcome an opportunity to have discussions with DWP about how we could use that €3.5m to good effect. If the EU made a decision in the European Parliament that this money should be used for the assistance of people in severe need – and it has got a food aid tag on it – then we hope they will talk to us.”
On the signs that the government would like to spend the money in helping people into work, rather than on food aid, Mould said: “It is the decision of government at all times what its priorities are for the money it has available. But it does need to spend money in several places not in one place. The Trussell Trust has provided through its network of food banks emergency assistance for over 500,000 people since 2013 who are in financial crisis, who are going hungry who have been referred by more than 23,000 different professionals holding vouchers.
“If people don’t get help when they are in financial crisis they lose their home, their families break down, they suffer anxiety and depression. All these things have a significant financial cost to the state. It is very important that the government looks beyond the narrow single issue argument of spending all the money into employment. Of course that is important but they are spending massive of money on that which is good. But this EU money is extra and originally intended to be for food assistance.
I can’t do much due to my health but I am volunteering my help.
Snakebite at least your getting up and helping out at the food bank, unlike JDP so around of applause we agree on something the residents finding it difficult to survive need all the help they can get, in Thurrock so well done I find it very rewarding