On 25th April 2013, Staff from United Biscuits and Jacob’s in Liverpool were invited to a ‘Team Volunteer Day’ with FareShare who are based in Hunts Cross, Merseyside.
Why us?
United Biscuits (UB) is a manufacturer of biscuits, savoury
baked bagged snacks, biscuits for cheese and cakes through their Companies
McVitie’s, Jacob’s & Carr's and are a founder supporter of the FareShare
organisation.
UB pays FareShare £5,000 a year in support but due
to the long shelf life of their products do not give them a lot of
product, unless there is an exceptional situation where they have produced
something that they could not sell but which is still absolutely safe.
Keen to build upon this relationship, they invited us to
go along, help out and see first hand the work they do.
Who are FareShare?
To quote from their official Twitter page @FareShareUK “UK charity fighting hunger and food
waste by rescuing surplus food and getting it to people in need.”
Volunteers go out in
vehicles packed with crates of food and deliver to women's refuges, homeless
shelters and other similar organisations in the city.
For more information and details on how to Volunteer or Donate
visit their website www.fareshare.org.uk/
After introductions, inductions
and a tour of the depot, it was down to work.
Two of our team jumped onto the van to help the driver with the
deliveries. The four of us who remained
in the depot got down to sorting out the boxes of food donated by
Manufacturers, Supermarkets and the general public courtesy of food-drives.
The majority of the stock comes in
on pallets but, as we found out, there are also huge cardboard boxes filled
with anything that a Supermarket may stock.
It was one of our tasks to sort through 2
of these boxes, putting similar items in crates by weight and documenting how
many crates we’d sorted. Each item had
to be checked for damages such as ripped packets or dented tins and also by Sell By or Best Before dates. Later,
the number of crates we had filled would be inputted onto a database to make
picking for the next days deliveries easier.
It was a dirty (and sometimes
sticky) job but somebody had to do it and well, that’s what we were there for.
 |
| On a break with other volunteers |
There were a number of other
volunteers there, whether they wanted
to be or not! We learnt some of these may actually have been carrying out community
service.
Whatever their reasons for being
there, they all worked very hard and worked well as a team. They got the job done without any
complaints. Credit deservedly goes to
them.
It was certainly a day of mixed
emotions. Shock at realising just how
many organisations rely on charities such as FareShare. Disbelief at realising only 1% of surplus
stock goes to the likes of FareShare but overall satisfaction at knowing we did
our bit to help out even if it was for only one day.
And Finally...
A short poem pinned up on the toilet wall...
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