Chester Pride’s food bank campaign in aid of the West Cheshire Food Bank 2023 launches on Friday 27th of October, hoping to collect more items than last year, totalling 4000 items. Understandably, with the cost of living increasing, the foodbank service is being used more than ever, and food items are needed to help families in the Cheshire West Region. The food bank is doing all it can to maintain stock levels. But the sad reality is, as soon as it comes into the warehouse, it goes back out again, which is why Chester Pride is launching its annual campaign a month earlier than initially planned.
The Campaign runs from October 27th, 2022, to December 15th, 2023, at several collection partners such as Chester Pride’s very own café The Rainbow Tea Rooms on Bridge Street, The Liverpool Arms (Northgate Street), Bed Student Rentals (Garden Lane), That Beer Place (Forgate Street, Commercial Bar & Hotel (St Peters Square) and The Scented Garden Retreat (Old Port Square) The total number of items will be doubled thanks to project partners Bank of America and Bed Student Rentals who alone contributed nearly 1,900 items last year thanks to its own staff, student tenants and landlords.
Items required include long-life juices, tinned potatoes, instant mash, instant pasta: mug shots or instant noodles, sponge puddings, cooking sauces, tinned rice pudding, tinned veg, soups, porridge, UHT Milk, Cereal, Biscuits, chocolate, personal hygiene products but to name a few with a polite reminder that tins of Baked Beans & Bags of Pasta are not required.
“With the cost-of-living issues seaming to affect even more people, I’m so pleased that we can bring this much-needed campaign back this year to help combat this in a small way. To date, we are close to raising 12,000 items that have been sent to the West Cheshire Foodbank since we launched this campaign back in 2019. The foodbank does a fantastic job in helping people brace themselves for record numbers of people in need so that’s why we have launched the campaign a month earlier than planned.
No person should ever have to choose between eating or heating, and the foodbank allows people to do both in these hard times, It saddens me that we have to run a campaign like this, but Chester Pride has a wide platform to help not only our LGBT+ community but the wider community, cost of living does not discriminate and sadly may affect everyone at some point, so we are asking people to drop off what they can at any of the collection points, Whilst there are collection points at supermarkets, our campaign different thanks to Bank of America and Bed Student Rentals, who will double the total amount collected, every single item even be it a 30p tin of veg or 50p pasta pack will truly make a difference, so a huge thanks in advance for your donations and to the drop-off partners” Said WARREN LEE ALLMARK CHESTER PRIDE CHAIR
