CHARITY FOCUS
Working hard to provide food and help to those in crisis Okehampton Food Bank has been helping provide food to people in need since 2008. Run by one part time coordinator and six volunteers, Okehampton Food Bank is an independent service working to combat food insecurity in and around Okehampton. Last year Okehampton distributed more than 2500 food parcels to families experiencing food insecurity. The food bank, stationed at Okehampton Baptist Church (OBC) on Fore Street, is open to all on Fridays between 10am and noon. It was in 2011 that Okehampton Food Bank found itself at the centre of helping those in crisis. Following the closure of desserts firm Polestar, Robert Wiseman Dairy and Sprung Slumber mattress factory more than 300 people lost their jobs affecting 20% of the population of Okehampton. The call for donations then rocketed from one or two parcels a week to between 40 and 50 in the same period.
Even before the pandemic, the number of food parcels distributed by the Trussell Trust, the largest Food Bank organisation in the UK had increased 74 per cent in five years, to a record 1.9-million parcels in the year to the end of March 2020. Three-million people in the UK went hungry in the early weeks of the Covid pandemic. Disrupted earnings, lock down and reduced supply chains forced more and more people to turn towards their local food bank for help. Even with the emergency cash injection from central government and mortgage payment breaks, the recordbreaking surge in redundancies across the country, up to 314,000 in the third quarter of 2020, meant that food banks were struggling to keep up. Malcolm Hamilton, coordinator of Okehampton Food Bank, said it was thanks to the volunteers that the service
was able to meet demand during this time. ‘Okehampton Food Bank was is blessed to have a wonderful team of volunteers working full time in the church, carrying on the important work of providing emergency food parcels to those in need during the Covid 19 pandemic. The pandemic forced more and more local families, many with young children into food insecurity. At its height, Okehampton Food Bank was distributing food to over 40 families a week. ‘However, it is too convenient to say Covid is to blame. The underlying problem is simple; people’s incomes aren’t enough to cover the cost of living. UK inflation made its biggest jump on record in August 2021, adding to pressure on households as the government ramps up taxes on workers and the removal of the £20 universal
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