HAMPER REPORT 2019
Find out how last year's project went.
Last year Citygate Church led a partnership of over 50 organisations to bring a Christmas of hope to hundreds of local families in crisis.
On Thursday 19th December, we delivered 192 hampers full of food, Christmas goodies and a message of hope from the Bible. Each hamper contained enough to feed a family of five for three days and included a whole chicken, fresh veg and a £5 toy voucher.
Our hamper team coordinated nominations from 21 different referral agencies who work all year round with families struggling to make ends meet. These included social workers, healthcare providers, churches and other charities. One church passed on thanks from their client who received a hamper:
“I’m so over the moon, it made me cry. Thank you!”
The vast majority of the food was contributed by partner organisations like community groups and local businesses. LV= contributed 600 litres of milk, tins of custard were donated by Trinity United Reformed Church and St Paul’s Church Throop and we even received contributions from small groups like the Bournemouth train crew and the home education community. In total, 25 different groups collected over 7,000 items to go in the hampers.
Nationwide Building Society provided their facilities and staff to pack the hampers in preparation for delivery day, which involved 62 volunteers covering over 350 miles bringing hampers to families. Many of the drivers have come back year after year to volunteer.
“Delivering hampers is one of the biggest highlights of my year,” said Bethan, one of our veteran drivers.
We also received some great financial support from corporate funds and the public. JP Morgan gave us £1,000 to spend on storage solutions and sent volunteers to help collect food from customers at Tesco. Designs for Humanity Fund provided £2,250 to buy luxuries for the hampers including Smyths toy vouchers. Foresters Financial paid £2,000 for the fresh and frozen food and sent a team of volunteers to help pack the hampers. 43 other supporters donated a total of £2,229.81 through our Sponsor a Hamper campaign.
“I love that this project has something for everyone. So many different kinds of organisations get involved and take ownership of a certain aspect of the hampers – it just brings people together!” said Ed Briggs, the Hamper Team Leader.
The list of supporters goes on and on – Nurturing by Nature loaned us the polystyrene crates we needed to deliver frozen food, students from Bournemouth University ResLife wrapped the hampers, Toadstall Plants and ASDA helped with the logistics and we can’t forget the key partnership between Bournemouth Foodbank and Citygate Church.
Citygate works closely with the Foodbank to support people out of crisis all year round, but the hamper project is a particular opportunity for them to bless our community by giving families experiencing food poverty a chance to celebrate Christmas together.
