This week we had our first volunteering day at Burngreave Food Bank.

The food bank is run by the Rock Christian Centre, in a building which the centre have acquired.  It is an old library on one side and the other side is old social housing offices based at Spital Hill, it’s a great and really worthy cause in one of the most impoverished areas of Sheffield. Spending the day here, and listening to the people who work here really hammered home how important initiatives such as the food bank are and the difference they make to such a vulnerable part of our society.

I spent the day with Gavin Anderson, Ros Handisides and Carmel Limb, who have all kindly written us a paragraph or two on the day.

Ros, Carmel and Gavin with Rachel (the manager of the food bank) and Jon West one of the volunteers

Here’s what Ros had to say:

‘I really enjoyed the experience of the Volunteering day. How I thought a foodbank ran and what it did are not what I expected.

Firstly, I have never seen so many cans of beans in my life!! Carmel and I  had the mammoth task of sorting all the donated food into categories and dates,  I can now see how valuable volunteers are to this kind of organisation. and I would definitely do this kind of volunteering again.’

Just some of the food we sorted through

and Carmel…

‘I  really  enjoyed my  time  at  the  food  bank  on  Wednesday  and you can tell  our  help  was  very  much  appreciated by  the  staff  there.

Roz  and  myself emptied  the  crates  of  beans,  meat, fruit,  rice  pudding etc.  and  sorted it into  boxes by  the  year it  was due to  expire, the food was then transferred to a large stock room ready to be picked for parcels.  In the afternoon we were  invited  to  go  through  into  the  café  area  when  the  food  bank  opened  at 2pm,  to  see  how  the  food bank operated and the parcels are distributed, it  also  gave us the chance  to  chat  with  some  of  the  volunteers  that  give  up  their  time  to  help   every  week to work at the foodbank.

It is  an  experience  I  will  not  forget  and  it  truly  makes  you  think  and  appreciate  what  you have  got. There are  people  who  are less  fortunate than yourself  through  no  fault  of  their  own  that  require the food  parcels  to  survive.

I  would  like  to  go  again  sometime  to  help  it  was  a  very  rewarding  day.  If  anyone  else  has  the chance  to  volunteer  in  the  future  I  would  say  take the opportunity to  help  out.’

Carmel and Ros cracking on sorting through soup!

Finally, Gavin has given us his recount of the day but has focused on a particular member of the team:

Gavin was roped into some of the heavier lifting with Dave

‘Volunteering at the food bank was such an interesting day.  Dave, the stock manager, needed help to categorise and date a mountain of food that had just been delivered from their recent food drive at Tesco on Spital Hill and Ecclesall Road.  After we had blitzed the poor fella with questions about his food banks he got us sorting through the food packages in full compliance with his stock control and management systems.  First food is categorised into groups – rice, pasta, beans, soups, peanut butter, coffee, milk, juice, tins of meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, new potatoes, “Vegetarian alternative” – a category of Dave’s own creation to mean tins of vegetarian complying food stuffs, and many more.  On completion of this exercise we then, for each category, grouped items into sell-by-date years or months.  The more soon sell-by-date items going directly onto the shelves ready for volunteers to collect when filling baskets for clients.  The later stuff goes into storage ready to replenish the shelves or be sent to other food banks.

Dave is an intriguing bloke from the north-east (judging by the accent), perhaps in his mid50’s, who devotes 15 hours a week to maintaining his stock control systems.  He runs a tight ship and can tell you where the sell-by-date is on everything available in Tesco.  Usually, he adorns his headphones with some Status Quo turned up and cracks on but this week he was most appreciative of people like us, turning up in numbers, to blast through a mountain of stock in a day.  But really it is Dave who offers much more of his time and hard work to ensure the volunteering basket-fillers can quickly get at the food items they need.  Interestingly, Dave is sick of pasta, rice, beans and soup.  After just 1 day looking over dozens and dozens of pasta packets and tins, when the shelves and store room are already full of the stuff, I can see why.  It is rice pudding, tins of fruit and fruit juice (not the stuff for the fridge) that Dave really likes to receive.  They fly off the shelves and Dave often runs short, so if you get tempted to donate items to folks whilst shopping in a Tesco, think of Dave and his tight stock-control system that has now given you that extra bit of insight into what they want most of all.’

Dave giving us his debrief