Exeter charities help deliver festive feast

By Marc Astley
24/12/22

There were piles of parsnips, bags of brussels and crates of carrots floor to ceiling in an Exeter food charity’s warehouse as it launched Operation Christmas Lunch.

Exeter Food Action supplied festive fayre for more than 1,000 people in the run up to the big day.

A donation of £20,000 from the Exeter Chiefs Foundation paid for the raw ingredients, treats, soft drinks and other goodies.

Chairman, Tony Rowe OBE, said: “We felt strongly that some of the money donated to us this year should be used to support a food charity.

“We have made a fighting fund of £50,000 available and any money not spent over the Christmas period will be ring fenced to help families in the New Year, which can be an equally tough time. I want to say a huge thank you and well done to Exeter Food Action for making this project work at very short notice. They have been an absolute pleasure to work with.”

Exeter Food Action takes delivery of excess food from shops and suppliers, and redistributes it to organisations that support people in need in Devon.

However, there had been a growing concern that leftover stock might be in short supply this year as shoppers, and supermarkets, tighten their belts.

At a recent meeting of the Exeter Chiefs Foundation, its trustees agreed to use a pot of undesignated money to help ease the burden on anyone struggling this Christmas.

They teamed up with Exeter Food Action which provides its services for free and is supported entirely by grants and donations.

EFA coordinator, Elizabeth Butland, said: “The two issues we have in the run up to Christmas are that any surplus festive stock is donated to us far too late for it to reach our users in time for December 25 and we simply don’t know what we are going to get, which makes planning almost impossible. Thanks to the Exeter Chiefs Foundation we have been able to make a difference to an awful lot more people than we normally would this Christmas.”

One of the organisations to benefit from the collaboration between the two charities was Westward Housing. Staff from the association collected £2,000 worth of food and was also able to fund shopping vouchers for some of its clients. One Exeter resident who received a donation said that he had recently lost his job and was in the five-week waiting period regarding universal credit

He was concerned that he wasn’t going to receive any money before Christmas and had been having a conversation with his partner about how they were going to afford to make ends meet. He said he was really grateful for the help and the fact that he was now going to be able to afford festive food for his family.

Celebrity chef Michael Caines CBE has been helping to coordinate the project. Mr Caines, who is also a trustee of the foundation, said: “As a charity our mission is to improve the lives of the people in our community and we really wanted to help those who are struggling this Christmas.”