No one should go hungry at Christmas #FoodbankAdvent
I am part of the UK Money Bloggers group. For the last couple of years, I have embraced their campaign to create a ‘reverse advent calendar’ to support food banks in the countdown to Christmas. It’s an amazing campaign, whereby you put an item of food in every day for 24 days and then give it to a food bank in December.
How a Reverse Advent Calendar can help this Christmas
Sometimes in life, you might be utterly broke. You struggle to pay your rent, essential bills, food and everyday items. Debts spread like poison ivy. Insomnia hits. Everything seems hopeless.
Many people during this crisis are turning to food banks. Mark Rashford has been incredible in using his celebrity status to promote supporting kids who are usually entitled to free school meals – offering them a lifeline during school holidays. However, for many Christmas is going to be an incredibly difficult time.
What’s a reverse advent calendar?
With a normal advent calendar, you open a little door each day and might take out a gift or chocolate. With a reverse advent calendar, you put one item each day into a box, to donate to a Foodbank at the end of the month. See a photo below from my foodbank advent last year.
Shielding and my #foodbankadvent
This year I won’t be able to put something in my food bank advent each day as I am not going to the shops each day. I am back to shielding and am not supposed to be going out anywhere right now.
Advice from the Trussell Trust:
If like me you want to donate but are unable to get to the shops. Food banks in our network will look after their own donations, so there are a few steps we would recommend:
- Get in touch with your local project andmention that you wish to donate. You can do this by using our Find a Food bank Map:https://www.trusselltrust.org/get-help/find-a-foodbank/
- Ask the food bank to provide you with their most recent shopping list so you know what they’re most in need of.
- Organise with the food bank the best way to donate as many food banks will now have vans and a team of volunteers that do regular drop offs and pick-ups, so it might be an option that they can pick up the food from a certain location. They can confirm this with you, if it’s a service they offer, and let you know of the likely times.