Help FareShare Tackle Hunger & Food Waste This January with a Vote in Our Charity Poll

Posted on 14 Dec 2020 by Amy Jackson
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As the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, FareShare believes that no good food should go to waste, especially when so many people across the country are going hungry. Originally co-founded by Sainsbury’s and the homelessness charity Crisis in 1994, FareShare became an independent charity in 2004. Last year, 2019, marked the charity’s 25th year of fighting hunger and food waste within the UK. Through their network of frontline charities, FareShare have provided the equivalent of 236.8 million meals in food to people in need across the UK.

 

How Do FareShare Fight Hunger & Food Waste?


Every year within the UK food industry, 1.9 million tonnes of food goes to waste. 250,000 tonnes of this food is actually still edible, enough to create 650 million meals. At the same time, 8.4 million people in the UK struggle to access food - this is the equivalent of the entire population of London. FareShare redistributes industry surplus food which would usually go to waste to charities that turn this surplus into meals for those who need it. FareShare is made up of 18 independent organisations that redistribute food to 11,000 frontline charities and community groups in the UK. All of the food that is redistributed is in-date, good to eat, nutritious, and reaches organisations such as homeless shelters, school breakfast clubs, community cafés and elderly people’s lunch clubs.

 

Tackling Childhood Hunger


Many of you will be aware of the recent work footballer Marcus Rashford has done to help FareShare support some of the UK’s most vulnerable families and raise awareness of childhood food poverty. As of 2020, Marcus has helped raise funds for FareShare, enabling the charity to provide an additional 9.5 million meals worth of food during the Covid-19 pandemic. FareShare joined the Child Poverty Task Force, co-founded and spearheaded by Marcus Rashford to endorse the policy recommendations on the National Food Strategy to make sure children have access to free school meals, to extend the holiday provision support to all children on free school meals and to increase the value of the Healthy Start vouchers to £4,25 per week (from £3,10).

 

The Impact of Covid-19


FareShare launched an emergency appeal in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Thanks to the generosity of funders, donors, volunteers and corporate supporters, in a matter of weeks they opened up 8 new warehouse spaces and signed up an additional 500 charities working in communities across the UK. This meant that these charities were able to deliver food parcels to vulnerable people including those in homeless shelters, domestic violence refuges, older people self isolating and those with serious illnesses.

 

How You Can Support FareShare


As we enter 2021, many families will still be feeling the financial impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and struggling to put food on the table. You can help FareShare to support those who are most vulnerable this month by voting for them in our January charity poll.

Find out more about FareShare and other ways you can support them by visiting their website: https://fareshare.org.uk/.

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