Guest Blog By Darcy Iveson-Berkeley
On Wednesday 18th March, I was furloughed from work at Britannia Hotels due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After a couple of days of being off work, I felt the need to help my local community during this crisis. I made some enquiries with a few organisations, one being the Sefton Council Voluntary Service, where I offered to help in any way possible.
After a couple of days, they got back to me and offered me a place at Shoreline Church Food Bank, located on Mornington Road in Southport. I enthusiastically accepted their offer. I was then contacted by Simon Cunningham who currently runs the Food Bank and we had a brief conversation and sorted out dates.
Volunteering with a Food Bank is something I hadn’t done before, but I was looking forward to starting. On Thursday 2nd April I headed down to Shoreline Church to start my first shift. I was greeted by six very friendly volunteers, who put me at ease from the start.
Simon Cunningham, gave me and another new volunteer a quick induction. Then very quickly we were assigned jobs to do, and off we went! At first glance, it seemed we had more than enough food to go round.
Before we opened to the general public, I quickly glanced through the window and there was a crowd starting to form outside. My job was to pre-pack groceries as the customers were not allowed to enter the Church, due to the pandemic. Then we opened the doors to serve the customers and as time passed, I was shocked at the numbers of people that were having to use the service. Soon we started running out of food.
These stunning rainbows in Southport give us all hope we can beat coronavirus
In little over an hour we served 42 people, which shocked me. I asked Simon, how many people on average does this Food Bank serve? He responded with 200 people a week and that number is rising due to this pandemic and many people being out of work. I was deeply concerned by those figures. There are four Food Banks in Southport that we are aware of, and Shoreline is just one of them, so it makes me wonder what the total numbers of users are in Southport.
Making a donation to a Food Bank, would be greatly appreciated, because we rely solely on your generosity. So next time you’re in your local shop, if you can donate just one item, it will be gratefully received and would make such a difference in somebody’s life. Most grocery stores have collection points, which are cleared frequently, because the demand is so great.
If you would like to volunteer in any way please contact Sefton Council Voluntary Service: [email protected]