To see latest phenomenal donation numbers through our Food Credit Scheme, check this table.
Update November 2023: Food bank use continues to increase as the cost of living crisis bites. Your donations are more valuable than ever.
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Most of us look forward to the holidays – a time to rest and take a break from the stresses of daily life. But for families living in poverty, holiday periods can be a time of extra hardship. Providing food for children during school holidays is estimated to cost families £30-£40 a week.
Without free school meals and breakfast clubs ovedr the holidays, many children go hungry.
The Trussell Trust, which coordinates a lot of the UK’s food banks, says food bank use spikes in the school holidays. It estimates that 3 million children are at risk of hunger in the holidays. Alongside the 1 million who receive free school meals, this includes another 2 million whose carers are working in jobs that don’t pay enough to feed their families.
And food bank use is increasing generally. The Trussell Trust’s food banks provided 1.3 million emergency food supplies to people in crisis last year – a 13% increase on the year before.
A fresh response
Most of the food distributed through food banks is packaged, non-perishable items that are easy to handle, store and distribute. But the Hackney foodbank has the capacity to distribute fresh food, and users put fresh produce high on their wish-list.
So we use your donations to buy sacks of fresh, organic staple fruit and veg (such as potatoes, carrots, apples and onions) to take to the centres, so they can distribute them to those most in need.
Thanks to all those of you who have donated your bag value already since we started our Food Credit Scheme in December 2018.
If you’re booking a break from the veg scheme over Easter, the school summer holidays (July to early September) or any other time, please consider donating some of your bags instead of booking holiday. If you've already booked holidays, you can cancel those (by unticking the box on the form) and choose to donate your bag value instead.
We’ll make sure that fresh food goes to the people who need it most, including some of the 26,000 children in Hackney who are living in poverty.