From left: Bradley Quirk from FareShare, Priti Patel MP with Tina Townsend from The Witham Hub & Witham Community Fridge.
Priti praises key workers and volunteers on visit to Witham Community Hub
On Friday 3rd July, Witham MP Priti Patel visited The Witham Hub which runs the Witham Community Fridge to meet key workers and volunteers who have worked hard throughout the pandemic to ensure that local people who were shielding received vital food packages and medicines. The work was carried out in conjunction with the FareShare Charity scheme (Tesco, Co-Op) the Neighbourly Food Scheme (Aldi, Lidl and M&S) and through donations from Witham residents.
The Witham Hub team has made 100 collections, amounting to some 3,523 kg of food, which translates to 8,388 meals provided for those most in need via the FareShare Scheme and similar collections via the Neighbourly scheme, plus direct donations received from Morrisons, so all of the local supermarkets have donated to the project (Pay it Forward – Witham). The Witham Hub volunteers also collected and delivered hundreds of prescriptions for those unable to leave their homes to collect them. At the height of the lockdown, the Hub team were helping 550 families a week and believe that they saved some 13,500 meals from going to landfill.
Priti, commenting after her visit said: “These are very impressive statistics and it was an honour and a pleasure to meet the people who have been working so hard behind the scenes to look after the most vulnerable in our community during the pandemic crisis. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for their time and efforts, often given at some personal risk. The same applies to key workers who have stayed at their posts during this difficult time, to ensure that we were able to buy food and life’s other necessities.
“The donations of food from the supermarkets through the good offices of FareShare, and Neighbourly were also crucial to the success of this project. It has been heart-warming to see the community pulling together with willing volunteers and donations both of food and cash to support this excellent project, when the chips were literally down.”