On Thursday 30th April eighteen Year 10 girls were hard at work volunteering at the Hammersmith and Fulham Foodbank Warehouse during one of our regular trips to ‘sort’ donations.
Every week, the Foodbank volunteers sort around 3 tonnes of donated food into categories, checking their sell by dates, and making sure they are suitable to be donated at one of 8 foodbank cafe sessions during the course of the week. As Maddy from the foodbank explained, this is around the weight of a fully grown elephant each week!
As you can see from the pictures, the amount of food sorted by FHS girls in the 90 minute session was astounding. Regular volunteers were so impressed by their motivation, diligence, maturity and sheer hard work! We managed to sort over 1.5 tonnes of donations, and even had a satellite team organising hygiene packages too!
We’re so grateful for the kind donations of our school community – each month we collect around 350kg, and this month cash donations of £150 too, which will help the foodbank to buy in additional food to distribute to those in need in west London. While distributing food is an important aspect of the Foodbank’s work, it is the additional support, advice, guidance and signposting that mean they can help people become self-sufficient in the long term. By donating our time and bags of food, we allow the foodbank staff members and volunteers to spend more time working on the programmes that can support people to lift themselves out of poverty.
Thanks also to FHS Parents Mrs Haase, Mrs Tomborowska, Mrs Soueid and Mrs Estes for coming to help out, as well as FHS Staff members Mrs Johnstone, Ms Kerr and Ms McKinley. A real community effort!
Mr Galloway, Head of Outreach
