As Swale starts to dry off after a miserably wet morning it has enabled some time for indoor reflection on the teams hard work over the last four weeks.
Already we have seen December demand in food parcels exceed Novembers requests and we are not even half way through the month yet. We have passed the 100 food parcels delivered milestone as well as 300 individuals fed and 1.1 tonnes of food distributed, since our project started under 6 months ago. We know that the need for support will ramp up into the early part of 2024 and we look forward to helping new & old faces alike in these challenging times.
After the great family event at Sittingbourne Christmas Lights and Sleigh Rounds we wanted to thank the organisers and public of Sittingbourne for the support and great day. We finally managed to count up the kind donations and you all contributed a massive £273.79 to support your community through our projects. Thankyou so much for you kindness.
We also completed the Swale Annual Count for Rough Sleepers with Swale Councils team. Thankyou to Ernie and the team for inviting us to help this year. It was certainly an eye opener and a good chance to learn about how this support is managed and the amount of compassion and care towards those that we encountered. We have to say we were incredibly lucky with mild temperatures of 12 degrees and no rain. Only a few days later temps had dropped to zero levels and the rain had arrived. So please give a thought or a small donation to those that support those out on the streets as its going to be a long, lonely winter.
Our Trustees Elaine Maylen Allen and Trevor Williams both spent the day at Asda Sittingbourne promoting our services, whilst collecting food and hygiene donations for our delivery parcels. Thankyou to Claire Fosbeary for giving us the opportunity to meet with your stores customers. Many thanks to those who generously donated to our shopping trolley
Our final community activity for this update was with the Sittingbourne, Milton & District Scouts at St. Michael’s Church – Sittingbourne for their festive service. We dusted off our Christmas jumpers and joined the singing with a packed church full of scouts, leaders and family. Very well done to the organisers for a well scripted service, the paper mill brass band
and the coffee, mince pie and chats afterwards. We are very grateful for the food donations raised by the children to support those families over the festive period who are struggling to make ends meet.
Another great month of collaboration with new parties and continuation of established working relationships we have the following thankyou’s to share:
– Sittingbourne, Milton & District Scouts for their Christmas food drive and festive evening
– Sittingbourne Morrisons Community / Sal Candy for the continued foodbank support.
– Claire Fosbeary and Asda Sittingbourne for the food drive opportunity
– Karen Roberts at the The Jenny Wren for the festive donation drive
– mhs homes group for the kind donation of Christmas food and children’s toys
– to all those small businesses, individuals and families that we have thanked personally on our group page – thankyou for your caring support.