Ashfield Voluntary Action is delighted to hand over the operation of the Emergency Foodbank to St John's Community Foodbank

28 March 2019

Ashfield Voluntary Action is absolutely delighted to hand over the operation of the Emergency Foodbank into the capable hands of St John's Community Foodbank.

For a number of years Ashfield Voluntary Action has run an Emergency Foodbank, supporting people in Ashfield and Mansfield. In these challenging times, the need for the project has grown and to ensure that the project continues to effectively serve the community it is time to hand over the day-to-day operation of the Emergency Foodbank to another charity who can take it forward. 

St John's Community Foodbank has been serving their local community for the last five years and has agreed to take over this project and continue to work in partnership with Ashfield Voluntary Action, Mansfield CVS, Sutton Christian Fellowship and a number of other organisations so that the Emergency Foodbank, over time, will better meet the needs of people in Ashfield and Mansfield. The Chair of Trustees, Elaine Moulton, commented, "we are really quite excited at the opportunity to work in partnership with other local organisations. Working together will ensure that it will be easier for people to access food parcels in their time of need. We are a community based charity and are totally committed to supporting local people. Working together in partnership like this will mean that we will ultimately be able to provide a better and more responsive service." 

The new service has been named 'Mansfield and Ashfield Emergency Foodbank' and will be operated primarily as a telephone service (although there will also be additional provision for homeless people who may not have access to a telephone). The scheme will go live on Monday 1st April and will run as a referral service. Those in need of a food parcel will be given a unique reference number and a collection point from which they can collect their parcel. In time it is hoped that the scheme will offer a number of collection points to make it easier for people to access food parcels local to them. 

The day-to-day operation of the scheme will pass to St John's Community Foodbank, but Ashfield Voluntary Action and Mansfield CVS will continue to provide support by promoting the scheme, lending support with networking and volunteer recruitment, helping to secure funding and working together to identify suitable satellite collection points.

Teresa Jackson, Manager at Ashfield Voluntary Action, commented, "this has been a real example of partnership work at its finest and we truly believe that the result will be a more flexible service which better meets the need of the local community."