Teams from across Capita Travel and Events offices recently came together for Volunteering Week to make donations to their local food banks, helping to feed dozens of families around the country.
The company, which normally supplies fresh fruit baskets in their offices on a weekly basis, made the decision to swap the fruit deliveries and put the money towards food for the food banks. Staff also donated a variety of food items.
Representatives delivered these donations to different sites across the country. In Derby enough food parcels to feed up to 20 people for five days were donated to Derby City Mission, a Christian charity who offer services for people in crisis and provide night shelters with free meals across the city.
Alison Pawlowycz, Food Coordinator for Derby City Mission Limited, said: “A big thanks to all at Capita Travel and Events for their generous donation. We exist solely on donations to provide food parcels and other food projects in our city to serve the poor and needy. Last year we provided over 550 food parcels through our debt and advice clinics to individuals and families in need, to help them from becoming homeless.”
The Stockport, Taunton and York offices made their donations to The Trussell Trust, a nationwide food bank network of 1,200 food banks, who provide nutritionally-balanced emergency food to people who have been referred in crisis.
The Stockport office donated 125kg of food – enough to feed 130 people – and the Taunton office donated almost 40kg of food – which can feed a family for up to a week.
Sue Weightman, the site manager of the Trussel Trust’s Taunton distribution site, said: “The site costs around £35K a year to run and receives no government funding, meaning that we rely completely on private donations. With the introduction of Universal Credits, we have seen overnight food bank requirements increased from one or two visits to several weekly visits for many months. Last year, we supported 5,000 people and we are currently 8% up this year. As such, we are very grateful for the donation from Capita Travel and Events and glad we can work together on any future initiatives.”
Nicola Harding, Operations Manager at Taunton who helped co-ordinate the donations, added: “One of our guiding CSR principles as a responsible business is to ensure we address socio-economic issues by investing and engaging in local communities. This was a fantastic initiative led by our Operations teams and something we have been proud to support. The small contributions the teams have made will make a significant impact on the lives of those less fortunate.”
Following from this success, the sites have pledged to undertake different activities that will make a big difference in their local communities, such as donation boxes on ‘pay day’, a Secret Santa food drop over Christmas, winter clothes collection for Nightshelter and decorating the local sites.
