FoodBank - Tackling food poverty in the UK

Hello and welcome to my blog. First, I’d like to thank you for taking an interest in my chosen charity. When someone says that word ‘poverty’ what do you think of? Maybe, children in Malawi, families in India or people in Syria. But what about families in the UK? Currently 13 million people in the UK live in food poverty. In Syria 2.2 million people live in food poverty. From this information you can see that many people in the UK need help, and fast!

FoodBank is a charity that helps families in food poverty. It supports them by providing them with the food that they need. 13 million people live in food poverty in the UK and 346,992 of those people were fed by FoodBank in 2013. So, as you can see from these statistics, the work of FoodBank is crucial. If it weren’t for FoodBank, many more families would be going hungry. But more is needed to be done to feed the rest of those people.

Recently there was a programme on BBC 1 for Sports Relief. Four celebrities stayed for three days with a family in food poverty. Each of the families that were part of the show had a budget of around £3 a day for food for the whole family. The average family of four spends around £100 on shopping a week. As you can probably tell, there is a huge difference between budgets.

There are so many reasons why people fall into food poverty. It may be because of redundancy, receiving benefits late, loss of family members etc. Most of the reasons that people come to ask for help from FoodBank is through reasons that cannot be helped. This is why it seems so unfair. Parents are going without food to make sure that their children are eating sufficiently. This should not be happening, especially in a nation like the UK.

This is Tia and her Mum (Anne-Marie). When Tia’s father lost his job and Anne-Marie received her benefits late, Tia and her family were forced to start asking neighbours for spare food. They simply could not afford food. Because of no fault of their own, Tia’s mum did not eat in order for Tia to be fed. But when Anne-Marie found out about FoodBank, the heavy burden was taken off her shoulders. She would now be able to feed herself and her family. FoodBank completely changed her life.
 

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my blog! For more information about the work that FoodBank do visit: www.trusselltrust.org. On the website there is a section dedicated to the work of FoodBank.

• Had you heard about FoodBank before?
• After reading my blog do you know feel more informed?
• Would you now consider donating to or supporting FoodBank? (You can donate food or money to your local FoodBank)

It would be really useful if you would take the time to leave a comment below stating also your hometown and country.

Now that you have read my blog I hope that I have informed you on the work of FoodBank and shown you why the work they do is crucial for many families. But there is no point informing people if they aren’t going to help……. So if you see a FoodBank collection please remember my blog. You can also donate online and to your local FoodBank.

Thank you
Sophie