Colleagues at Futures went wild in the aisles at a local supermarket to donate much needed items to a Belper foodbank.
Sadly (depending on your age) Dale Winton or Rylan Clark weren’t in attendance and luckily there was no time limit or need to run around like a headless chicken. Instead, thanks to a brilliant idea by Futures’ Plumbing Engineer, Scott Bacon, we were able to buy a full shopping list for foodbank, Hope for Belper.
Scott said: “As an organisation we offer lots of support to our customers, from money advice, to helping customers get jobs. But I was thinking, what else can we do.”
That’s when Scott looked into the Nectar points scheme at Sainsburys as a way to raise money to be given back to the community. Scott said: “At one of our main depots, we mostly fill up our vans with petrol at the Sainsbury’s in Ripley. I looked on their website to see if we could get a company card, so all the points from the vans being filled up went into the same pot.”
Over the space of a few months, the points were building up and it was decided the money should be used for local foodbanks in the communities where our customers live.
Scott said: “The reality is, life and circumstances are hard and sometimes you find you or your family are in situations that are out of your control. Foodbanks are a lifeline for a lot of our customers, so while we have to fuel the vans anyway, the upside to that is indirectly we’re putting food on the tables of families that are struggling to eat.”
The first supermarket shop we’ve been able to buy has been donated to Hope for Belper, a foodbank that’s been supporting the people of Belper since 2009. The foodbank provided Futures with a shopping list of needed items, including tinned foods, baby wipes and toilet roll which was then bought using the Nectar points at Sainsbury’s.
Jo Lambourne, who’s volunteered at Hope for Belper since it started said: “We’re going through around 80 bags of food a week, which is just frighteningly quick. We’ve had a massive increase in people coming here and we’re seeing more people now in work that’s using the foodbank too.
“We’re incredibly grateful for this support, we wouldn’t be able to run without donations like this, so we’re very grateful.”
This is a scheme we’ll hopefully be continuing for many years to come, as we’ll keep donating to different foodbanks across the communities where our customers live.
Scott said: “It’s a simple idea and a small gesture, but will make a big difference to someone.”
