Volunteers provide vital support to Kirkcaldy Foodbank

Volunteers in Fife have found new ways of getting vital support to Kirkcaldy Foodbank.

Tapping into contacts in the catering trade, Fife Food Group has been able to buy essentials, and deliver them to the frontline service.

To date, it has delivered over £900 of food, with more to come.

The response came after the initial burst of panic buying left supermarket shelves bare, and foodbanks across Fife struggling to find supplies for families in crisis.

Members of Phoenix Fife Business Referrals group and Dunfermline Toastmasters started to try and find an alternative way of providing help.

Sam Forsberg of ActionCOACH who, together with the help of catering company, Garraffo Catering Solutions, tapped into their industry contacts and sourced food at wholesale cost.

It had been looking into providing cooking takeaway meals before the panic buying delivered a real emergency for foodbanks.

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Sam who lives in Kirkcaldy said: “Thanks to Garraffo Catering Solutions we made a start by finding essentials at wholesale prices.

“We started with five or six members in the group and now there are 12 of us. Between us we have invested over £900 at wholesale prices. The first week we did one delivery but last week, we couldn’t fit everything into the car so we did two deliveries.

“The volunteers at Kirkcaldy Foodbank were really helpful. They confirmed that they could divide up the bulk quantities for distribution.”

Ballingry based company, Ivan Wood & Son, a family-run came yup with a great price for fruit and vege, and topped up the orders with a contribution of its own, while Headshots Scotland also donated Hey Girls sanitary products.

Added Sam: “I’d like to thank the members of the group, many of whom are self-employed or small business owners and, despite facing a stark drop in income themselves, are still determined to help. When so much is out of our control it’s good to be doing something to help, particularly for those hardest-hit during this crisis.”

The group believes the system could help other foodbanks in Fife, and is keen to support people interested in forming their own organisations to provide support.

Joyce Leggate, who chairs Kirkcaldy Foodbank, said: “We are so grateful for the support we are receiving from Fife food group as we struggle to meet the unprecedented demand for help at this difficult time. Donations such as this go a long way to help."

Phoenix Fife Business Referral Group started in June 2019 and was meeting every week at Oswald House in Kirkcaldy. It is currently meeting online during the coronavirus lockdown. Dunfermline Toastmasters is a group which helps people improve public speaking and meets every second Thursday at Carnegie Conference Centre. ikt is currently meeting onine too.

Fife Food Groups members are: Garraffo Catering Solutions Ltd; Sam Forsberg, ActionCOACH (Fife); Heather Stuart, ONFife (Fife Cultural Trust); Linda Paterson, APC Fife & Tayside; Catherine Maciocia, Fife Business Services; Michelle McWilliams, Michelle McWilliams Communications; Lisa Weir, Flexi Business Support; Mo Gill, HR Dept Dundee & West Fife; Alan Martin, Chat Marketing; Jayne Smith, McEwan Fraser Legal; Elaine Gillies, Gillytree Studio Glenrothes; Raju Uppalapati

https://www.facebook.com/PhoenixReferrals/

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