Nearly four million people watched FareShare on BBC’s The One Show to see how we’re helping to support thousands of families during the Coronavirus crisis with food poverty in Greater Manchester. It was great to showcase all the hard work of our staff, volunteers and food donor partners.
FareShare is moving house and we want to do so much more
We now need your help to raise £800,000 to move to a bigger warehouse. With that, we can handle even more food and ensure proper social distancing between our staff and volunteers.
Thanks to our brilliant staff, volunteers and frontline charities – not to mention a little help from a certain Manchester United football star along the way. More people than ever are aware of food poverty in our communities.
We’re well on the way to getting a record amount of food out this year. In fact, since the lockdown came into effect in March, FareShare Greater Manchester has distributed over 600 tonnes of donated food – enough to create over 1.4 million meal portions.
However, there’s a lot still to do. Before the lockdown, there were already 620,000 people struggling to get by with food poverty in Greater Manchester including 200,000 children and young people. The COVID-19 crisis has hit the most vulnerable the hardest, so we expect this number to grow as we face the economic difficulties to come.
That’s why we want to more than double the amount of food we send out to frontline charities to an amazing 7 million meals a year, but we’ve reached the limits of what our current depot in East Manchester can provide.
A bigger, better warehouse
Thankfully, we’ve secured a long-lease for a bigger and better warehouse to operate from adjacent to our current depot on New Smithfield Market. The move will enable us to grow and expand our food distribution service, as well as provide better facilities for our hardworking staff and volunteers at our parent charity EMERGE 3Rs and sister social enterprise EMERGE Recycling.
The new building – we’re yet to decide a name – will have more than double the floorspace of our current depot, as well as new kitchen-canteen area. The canteen will ensure our wonderful volunteers get a decent meal themselves and the kitchen area will be used for food training and events.
However, the building is in need of serious refurbishment before we can move in.
Our new depot will be a fantastic space that our staff, volunteers, supporters and the whole community will be proud of but it’s not yet fit for purpose. Old walls need replacing, the concrete yard needs repairing, we need to install a new industrial fridge and two freezers, staff facilities and toilets need refurbishing, we need to fit out ICT for the new office; there’s a long list of things to do. We also want it to be an eco-friendly building that’s fit for the future. We’re planning to install a waste heat recovery system for hot water that reuses the heat generated by our fridges and freezers, as well as solar panels on the roof and an external garden space for staff, volunteers and community use.
Miranda Kaunang, Head of Development at FareShare GM.
We need your help
We’ve launched a Better Building Appeal to help us raise the £800,000 we need to make this vision a reality. Thanks to our generous funders and corporate supporters, we’re already two-thirds of the way there. To get us over the line, we need your help.
Services like FareShare Greater Manchester are now more important than ever. Every penny we raise helps in our mission to:
- Save more food from waste and;
- Give it out to those most in need across GM and neighbouring areas.
Donate to our appeal online via Virgin Money, or text FSGM11 and then your donation (e.g. FSGM11£10) to 70070.
Alternatively, if you’d like to donate directly to our bank or set up a standing order, please contact Jay on 0161 223 8200 ex 101 or email finance@emergemanchester.co.uk.
Thank you!
FareShare Greater Manchester is part of the environmental charity EMERGE 3Rs, charity number 1132944. As well as being part of the FareShare Network.
