Foodbank Newsletter – June 2025

We welcome our new volunteers, Rosemary Delmonte and Sue Newman to the Foodbank. We are sorry to lose Marion Toulson who was our warehouse Maintenance Manager and Amanda Harris our Volunteer Coordinator although Amanda will still continue to help with deliveries. Our number of volunteers remains at around 130.

We continue to offer meat coupons once a month through Leopards the Butchers at a value of £20 – £40, depending on the size of family, although we no longer have the option of fruit and vegetables at Leopards for the non-meat eaters.

The Trussell Trust who have supported us with our warehouse rent of £15,000 per year can no longer do this as our 3 year support for this comes to an end in August. We are grateful for the Trust’s financial support to get Barnsgate up and running. We have also changed our Trussell Trust motif to its new one as you can see in the new sandwich board outside the warehouse.

The new defibrillator has now been attached to an outside wall at Barnsgate in a heated cabinet jointly paid for by the Barnsgate Estate and its tenants including the Foodbank.

The apex of the warehouse on the south west end has now been finally repaired on the second attempt, with both the wall being waterproofed with a new membrane and boarding, and the top part of the roof being repaired and lined also. This brings an end 2 years of leaks.

Unfortunately, we are having to purchase more food as our supermarket collection donations have reduced by about 50%. It is envisaged that we will spend over £30,000 during the next year. We do however seem to increase our financial donations each month. We now have a second bank account which is realising 3.35% interest annually. Many of our financial donations come from direct debits, gift aid, commercial firms, schools and colleges and churches.

The latest statistics show that our client numbers are dropping in terms of vouchers, which is a good thing. We are now feeding around 3,500 people in the area annually, whereas two years ago we were feeding around 5,000. In the last 6 months of 2025 we fed 808 households, 295 single clients, 324 small families, 104 large families, 1,132 adults, and 1,129 children. We made 691 deliveries with 114 being collected from the warehouse. With support from Sals Shoes we delivered 44 pairs of new shoes and, with support from Family2Family, 57 school backpacks were also delivered.

At Easter we were able to distribute many Easter eggs to clients, including 106 donated by Balfour Beatty brought over from Broadstairs in Kent.

The Trustees are in the process of finding a new Foodbank Coordinator for when I step down at the beginning of October. If any of our volunteers are interested in this role or sharing this role, please let Bertie Pearce know.

The Foodbank Barbecue on Sunday 8th June at United Church went extremely well, with a big thank you to Bertie for organising the event and Philippa arranging the rest of the food and desserts. Also, a thank you to the volunteer team which helped Philippa and Bertie, and to Sheila and the United Church for providing the venue.

On Monday 23rd June, I gave a short talk to 400 girls at Mayfield Girls School about the Foodbank along with a cheque for £325, raised by the students and their Live Simply Project, where the students saved money from eating more plain and simple foods over a period of 3 months. The photo below shows the presentation.

Finally, I wish to thank all our volunteer teams who weekly do a fantastic job in giving up their spare time, and our Trustees who support us in all we do. It is important to remember who we do this for. We try to help all those in the Crowborough area who are vulnerable and need our help.

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