Irons Supporting Foodbanks recently received the good news that we were successful in obtaining a £1,000 grant from London City Airport Community Fund from their 2024 allocation of more than £41,000, made to 15 local charities and not for profit community organisations.
This grant will allow us to supply a further tonne of food worth £4,000 from our foodbank supplier HISchurch for the local foodbanks who depend on our support. The deliveries to eight foodbanks will be made over the next few weeks.
West Ham United has also kindly donated to us a large quantity of surplus clothes from their store warehouse. Over the last few weeks we have been distributing these across east London and Essex to a number of homeless centres and community groups.
In the last few days we will have delivered over £30,000 worth of tracksuits, shirts and coats to Bonny Downs, NEWway, St Margarets Church, Sphere Support, Chelmsford Rough Sleepers Support, The Source Barking, Warm Hearts for Cold Hands and Helping Hands Bethnal Green. We have more deliveries scheduled over the coming days to Hammers4Work, Lola’s Place and other community groups. We’ve also received a further £5,000-worth of new sports and leisure clothes and footwear from Umbro.
This month we will again be running the Christmas chocolates campaign for the children whose families need to use foodbanks. This is the fifth year that we have run this campaign and in that time we have distributed several thousands of Christmas chocolates through our local foodbanks. This year we hope to distribute over 3,000 and would welcome any matchday donations of selection boxes.
In the last few weeks we’ve continued to support the community-run Plaistow Pantries, who operate six food donation boxes outside residents homes, on the basis of ‘take what you need, leave what you can’. These have been set up to help residents with emergency food, when they can’t get to their local foodbank. A number of communities around the country have set up these neighbourhood initiatives and we top these up whenever we can.
Through our membership of Newham Chamber of Commerce, we’ve been able to effect some positive networking by securing a large quantity of surplus mattresses from one of the Victoria Docks hotels, which are presently being distributed to a number of local community groups in Newham and Barking.
And finally, we would like to thank Andy and Paul from the WHU Supporters’ Club who have arranged for us to store our matchday collection equipment at the University premises that they use for the matchday supporters club meetings. It makes a huge difference to us to have these stored locally, rather than bringing them in by car for each game.
As usual we always welcome new volunteers to collect with us on a matchday, and even if just for an hour or so, it makes a difference. Contact us at ironsfoodbank@gmail.com for any further information needed. Our activities are always covered on our website ironsfoodbanks.co.uk and our socials.
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