We’re giving back this festive season
The festive season is upon us, so it’s important everyone gets an opportunity to experience a bit of Christmas magic! Supporting people and families who may have fallen on tough times is part what this month is all about. So, both Novati and AMA Waste partnered up with a local community food bank Trussell Trust this month.
We’ve been operating in Newark since 2003 and our local community is important to us. AMA Waste has been operating for over a decade in Kings Lynn, so we both wanted to do something which would support both local communities which is close to our hearts.
With entire UK currently experiencing soaring cost of living, this means more and more people are being forced to use food banks and for the first time ever, food banks are giving out more food than being donated. The team all got involved donating small items from home, volunteering at the main distribution sorting areaand the Tesco superstore collection day, who kindly will contribute monetary value from the items we managed to pick up from the public, who donated to the Trust that day. We had a blast working with the trust to help supply families with food for Christmas season.
Carol and Paddy Henderson founded the Trussell Trust in 1997. In 2000, Paddy received a call from a mother in Salisbury, who was struggling to afford food and faced sending her children to bed hungry. Upon investigating data on poverty and deprivation in the UK, they found that significant numbers of people faced going hungry because of sudden crises. Salisbury Foodbank was born in their garden shed and garage, providing three days’ emergency food to local people. Twenty years later, a support network of food banks across the UK is supported by thousands of volunteers. Each provides emergency food to people in crisis, and additional support to help tackle the root causes that sweep people into poverty and build people’s resilience, so they are less likely to need a food bank in the future. They’re working hard to bring together the experiences from food banks in UK networks and communities, to challenge the structural economic issues that lock people in poverty, and campaign for change to end hunger and poverty in the UK, so that food banks are no longer required.
NOVATI’s People Director Cathy Cook said: “This is a worthy cause, everyone at the foodbank works hard to support our community in these challenging times, especially during the run up to Christmas. This charity helps to prevent malnutrition and strives to combat poverty and hunger in our local community. I would just like to thank all their amazing staff who are volunteers and help organise nutritionally balanced foods essential for those in need. The partnership with Trussell Trust is a great demonstration of how we can collaborate with our local community to create social value.”
