Fife’s biggest anti-poverty charity ramps up operations to help 34,000 families

The Cottage Centre led initiative now has 60 charities and organisations on board, and it has distributed over 175,000 surplus goods from Amazon’s huge fulfilment centre in Dunfermline to families in need.

The project now takes in social work, churches, community groups, foodbanks and health centres as it works collectively to get the help needed to people as quickly as possible.

A major warehouse in Lochgelly acts as its central hub with plans to open more across the Kingdom ahead of an anticipated rise in referrals this autumn and winter.

This week the project was visited by Andy Burnham, who served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet and is now Mayor of Greater Manchester.

He was in Fife to see how it works, and how it could be adapted south of the border.

He was joined by the senior management team from Amazon and a host of invited guests who saw first hand the scale and speed of the groundbreaking operation.

Launched last December, it aimed to help 13,000 families in a year.

That number has now soared to 34,000 little over eight months.

Mr Brown, patron of the Cottage Centre, helped to pull the strands together when he first made contact with Amazon’s UK Managing Director John Boumphrey, Co-Op and Scotmid.

Now more businesses are getting on board as the need for support continues to grow.

Mr Brown said: “Our target was 15,000 in the first year. We have now helped 34,000 families with 175,000 goods.

“It is moving very very fast and growing all the time.”

Jamie Strain, general manager at Amazon’s fulfilment centre, was among the visitors to the warehouse this week.

His staff are working with six people from the Cottage Centre to keep the regular supply of good flowing through the hub and on to families in need.

He said: “When you see the passion and urgency from the team at the Cottage it really brings home to you the importance of this project.

“It has had a huge and positive impact on people’s lives - people with the greatest need.

“Our objective is to provide a regular supply of vital household goods to help ease poverty in Fife at a time when, with fuel and food bills rising, people are under more pressure than ever.

“The partnership with the Cottage is fantastic. We can see the benefits when we come here every few weeks.

“Bringing everything together under one roof speeds things up - we get them here at right time and at speed, and get them to people as quickly as possible.”

The project gets a weekly inventory of goods coming in, and that is sent to all the organisations which have signed up.

They then turn things round very quickly to get the goods out to people.

Added Mr Strain: “We’re turning round the inventory much quicker - we need to keep supplying the right items to the right people at the right time.”