East Antrim shoppers thanked for donating hundreds of meals

During the annual Tesco Food Collection at the end of November shoppers in Carrick donated enough packets, tins and boxes to provide 1424 meals while customers in Antrim’s donations provided for 2869 meals. to help the Trussell Trust and FareShare in their vital work. Tesco tops up all customer donations to the collection by 20%.

Holding the Tesco Food Collections, which ran for three days in large stores, is just one of a number of ways in which Tesco supports the two food charities. The supermarket has provided more than £60m in support to help the charities feed communities during the pandemic.

The supermarket has announced a further £4m of food for FareShare in recent months and donates two million meals a month of surplus food via the charity.

Food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network are expected to provide a food parcel every nine seconds this winter, while FareShare is supplying more than double the food that it did before the pandemic to 11,000 frontline charities and community groups feeding people across the UK.

Declan McKillop, Development Manager at FareShare NI, said: “This year has been so difficult for so many people and FareShare has seen demand for our food skyrocket. We continue to provide over two million meals per week to vulnerable communities across the UK, and 90% of the organisations we work with expect demand to remain the same as at peak crisis levels, or even increase through the winter. We are immensely grateful to every single person that donated food during this year’s Tesco Food Collection.”

Trussell Trust CEO Emma Revie said: “Throughout 2020, communities across the UK have stepped in to provide vital support to people left without enough money for the basics. And we have been truly humbled to see how much people are willing to give to food banks in our network as they face their busiest winter ever.

“It’s not right that any of us are forced to a charity for food but thanks to the incredible compassion and generosity of Tesco customers during the Tesco Food Collection, food banks in our network are able to continue to provide the lifeline of emergency support for local people in crisis this winter.”

Shoppers who were unable to donate in store during the Tesco Food Collection can still show their support for the two charities by donating Tesco Clubcard vouchers or money – find more at https://www.tesco.com/zones/supporting-charities-and-communities