Report from Valerie Lambert
The Community Fridge is on the move!
On Friday 17th July we moved the fridges and freezers and everything connected with the distribution of food to The Bookham Youth Centre. We have been so grateful to the Baptist Church for being so accommodating and supportive over the last few months as the size of the “operation” grew. We had to alter our way of working to take food bags of food out to many families and individuals who were affected by the Coronavirus, having to self-isolate, having reduced incomes, being made redundant and many other reasons. It has been wonderful to be able to save so much food from landfill and some weeks we have been delivering over 150 bags of food to households.
The Surrey Local Resilience Forum is now using Bookham Youth Centre as a food distribution hub, as part of their response to COVID-19. They are receiving bulk ambient food which will be sorted into food boxes and distributed by SCC Community Transport providers across the county. The Community Fridge have the opportunity to use part of the building making this an amazing centre for food distribution.
The job we have been doing and will continue to perform would not have been possibly without the wonderful team of volunteers who have come together to collect, pack and distribute food in the Bookham, Effingham, Fetcham and Horsley area. There is no end in sight at the moment to the need and under some superb leadership we will continue to run the Community Fridge in this way as long as necessary. Some of our volunteers have now returned to their employment so new volunteers would be very welcome to pack or distribute. We do have expenses so any financial donations also welcome, visit our website or phone us.
The Meeting Place is the lead organization overseeing the Community Fridge as well as a coffee shop, language hub and lipreading classes. These other parts have had to work in different ways currently but are able to keep in touch with all those who are grateful for these services.
If you are interested in finding out more please go to our website: themeetingplace.org.uk
email: info@themeetingplace.org.uk or call mobile 07425 133431 to leave a message.
Also you can follow us on Facebook. facebook.com/bookhamcf/
