As reported in a September news item, Exeter Food Action is now a recipient of funds raised through the Exeter Community Lottery. From every £1 ticket purchased, which buys a line of potentially lucky numbers, 60p goes to local good causes, and we’re one of them.
On Saturday 28th October, for example, an Exeter resident matched 4 numbers and won £250.00. With a top prize of £25,000, and every ticket having a 1 in 50 chance of winning, the odds of a win are better than with the National Lottery.
Please consider participating if you can and, at the same time, supporting Exeter Food Action. Simply head over to our Exeter Community Lottery page and click on ‘Buy Tickets’.
An earlier news item (17.08.23), referred to the fact that we’re breaking records, although we’d rather not be because they reflect ever-rising demand. This trend has continued and, in our last quarter, which covers the period from July to September, we redistributed 25 tonnes of food, taking our total to just over 93. It now seems likely that we’ll have broken the 100 tonne barrier by the middle of November, which is far in excess of the total for whole of the previous year.
To provide some kind of context the August news item compared the weight of the food we’d distributed back then to a plane. If we break the 100 tonne barrier we’ll have gone stratospheric: the Space Shuttle, including its orbiter, main engines and solid rocket boosters, weighed about 100 tonnes at lift off. Alternatively, for something more down to earth, with the heaviest elephants on record weighing close to 10 tonnes, we’ve distributed food comparable to the weight of 10 elephants.
Whether it’s planes, space shuttles or elephants, however, such context, while helpful, shouldn’t overshadow or make light of the real challenges that these volumes reflect. Although there’s no official figure for an ‘average’ meal weight, the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a climate action NGO working around the globe to tackle the causes of the climate crisis, recommends 420g.
Using WRAP’s calculation, if we break the November barrier we’ll have provided in the region of 238,000 meals for the many families and individuals we support. Regrettably, according to a recent report by the Trussell Trust (20.09.23), the cost of living crisis is deepening for people on the lowest incomes – but we remain determined to rise to the challenge. Anyone wishing to help us do so by making a donation to our vital work can do so easily via this link.
A recent survey of 9,000 teachers by our partners, FareShare, found that concern for hungry pupils led to one in four bringing food into school, with over a third saying that their schools regularly provided food support to children and their families.
Worryingly, the report highlighted that the highest proportion was in the South West, where 29.4 per cent of teachers said they had personally provided food for pupils during the 2023 summer term. This compared with 28.7 per cent in the North West, 25.7 per cent in Yorkshire and Humber, and 25.6 per cent in the Midlands.
FareShare has said that without access to more food the majority of the charities it supports may have to reduce their services, impacting families across the UK, and they’re calling on the Government to fund food surplus redistribution to get good food to people, not waste. You can view their call via this link.
You can read more about the report’s findings via this link, but if you’d like to support Exeter Food Action’s efforts to address the challenges faced by so many struggling families and individuals in Exeter and across Devon, please consider a donation, however small.
We’re determined, as ever, to rise to the challenges of food insecurity but we can’t do this without the kindness and generosity of our friends and supporters. Please help if you can, which you can do easily by following the donation button below.
Exeter Food Action is now a potential recipient of funds raised through the Exeter Community Lottery. Draws take place every Saturday and ticket holders have a one in fifty chance of winning something, with a top prize of £25,000. From every £1 ticket purchased, 60p goes to local good causes in Exeter, and Exeter Food Action could be one of them.
If you’d like to have a chance of winning and of supporting Exeter Food Action at the same time, simply head over to EFA’s Exeter Community Lottery page and click on ‘Buy Tickets‘.
In between delivering food the weight of almost two Airbus A320 passenger planes (see previous news item), our hardworking EFA team also finds time to rest and play. On 14th September, thanks to an invitation from Topsham Rugby Club, and with the expert coaching of EFA volunteer, Dave Turner, a group comprising volunteers, friends, staff and a trustee, boldly went where none had gone before and took to the pitch for an evening taster session of walking rugby.
Although slightly daunted at playing alongside the wonderfully named Topsham Fossils, winners of the inaugural 2018 Devon Walking Rugby Festival, the 2019 National Vintage Games, the 2022 Crediton Fun Cup, the 2022 Crediton Fair Play Award and the 2022 Withycombe WR Cup, thanks to Dave’s patient tuition our team fared well, and no injuries were sustained.
Walking Rugby is one of England Rugby’s non-contact formats of the game and, much to our team’s delight, all slightly anxious at the prospect of the bruises, bumps and scary looking scrums seen in proper rugby, walking rugby’s quite different. There’s no tackling, no scary scrums, no line outs and no kicking, just ‘touch’ tackles, with the game played on a much smaller pitch and participants walking at all times. It was all about fitness and fun, and fun was had by all.
Huge thanks to Topsham Rugby Club for the opportunity. We’ll be back!
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported overall food inflation rose 11.5% in August, down from 13.4% in July. But while retail inflation has dropped it doesn’t mean that things are getting cheaper, just that prices increased more slowly between September 2022 and August 2023 than they did between August 2022 and July 2023. The main reason retail inflation dropped was because fresh food prices rose less rapidly. While this is moderately encouraging news, it seems likely that the rising demand seen by Exeter Food Action in the first half of the year will continue for the foreseeable future.
Period covered: 01 – 07 August 2023
Shop price annual inflation decelerated further to 6.9% in August, down from 7.6% in July. This is below the 3-month average rate of 7.7%. Shop price growth is at its lowest since October 2022.
Non-Food inflation remained unchanged at 4.7% in August. This is below the 3-month average rate of 5.0%.
Food inflation decelerated to 11.5% in August, down from 13.4% in July. This is below the 3-month average rate of 13.1% and is the fourth consecutive deceleration in the food category. Food inflation is at its lowest since September 2022.
Fresh Food inflation slowed further in August, to 11.6%, down from 14.3% in July. This is below the 3-month average rate of 13.8% and is at its lowest since August 2022.
Ambient Food inflation decelerated to 11.3% in August, down from 12.3% in July. This is below the 3-month average rate of 12.2% and is the lowest since January 2023.
A Business Insight survey by consumer intelligence company, NIQ, shows that 60% of households expect to be severely or moderately impacted by rising household costs in the coming months.
Anyone familiar with Exeter Food Action and who’s visited our warehouse or been a recipient of one of our many food deliveries, will no doubt have had the pleasure of meeting Wendy Kearns. Since October 2020 Wendy’s been one of our much-valued delivery drivers and, although she still is, we’re delighted to report that, since May, she’s also taken on an additional ten hours as EFA’s Volunteer Coordinator.
It’s evident from Wendy’s infectious positivity and kind nature that she is ideally suited to her new role. “I love working with our amazing volunteers and beneficiaries. It’s the vital work that we do and the fact that every day is different that gets me out of bed in the morning”.
It’s a bit odd to welcome someone who’s already here but I’m sure visitors to our website, as does everyone at EFA, will join us in wishing Wendy every success in her new role.
If you’d like to join our wonderful team of Exeter Food Action volunteers, we’d love to hear from you:
There’s no escaping the fact that food insecurity in the UK is on the rise. As reported in an earlier news post, in the first six months of this year alone, EFA distributed 70,000 kgs of food to the food banks and community groups we support. By the end of July, we had already exceeded last year’s total i.e. just seven months into the year.
We’re not alone in seeing such a steep rise in demand. Between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023, food banks in the Trussell Trust’s UK wide network distributed close to three million emergency food parcels to people facing hardship, an increase of 37% from the same period last year. More than one million of these parcels were distributed for children.
One in seven people (14%) across the UK say that they or their household have experienced food insecurity over a twelve-month period, equating to an estimated 11.3 million people.
Rates of food insecurity rise to almost one in three (30%) in the most deprived geographical areas of the UK.
One in fourteen people (7%) report that they or their household have used at least one type of food aid in the last year, equating to an estimated 5.7 million people being supported by food aid.
More than two thirds of people (71%) experiencing food insecurity have not used any form of food aid in the last year.
Food banks in the Trussell Trust network distributed almost three million parcels in the year to April 2023, the most parcels ever distributed in a single year, and a 37% increase on 2021/22.
Figures courtesy of the Trussell Trust.
View/download the Trussell Trust report: ‘Hunger in the UK‘ (pdf).
The online Exeter City Football Club’s fans’ forum, ExeWeb, will be donating to us every time the Grecians score a goal in the 2023/24 season. For every goal scored, members have pledged to donate £1.00 each to Exeter Food Action to help us in our efforts to tackle food poverty and waste. And for fans unable to donate for every goal but who would still like to help, they’ve set up a dedicated donations page on Just Giving.
Our Summer 2023 newsletter is now available on our website and future issues will be too. You can download a copy here (pdf). The latest issue is bursting with news, with profiles of some of our amazing volunteers and various items of potential interest to readers, including a piece about the world’s first ever food bank, how footballers are doing their bit to help out, a new Kids Zone, and how we’re breaking records (see below).
We’re flying high!
We’re breaking records, although we’d rather not be because they reflect ever-rising demand. In the first half of this year we managed to get just under 70,000 kgs of food onto the tables of people who need it. This exceeds the total amount of food we were able to provide in the whole of the previous year. To provide some kind of context, an empty Airbus A320 passenger plane, as pictured below, weighs less at a mere 42,600 kgs!
“Happy to play a small role in this really important project. The world needs more people and initiatives like this. A massive thanks.” — OR
“We are happy to help this fantastic project, to both reduce landfill and help those who really need it :)” — E&G
