FOR EACH of the past four years Whitchurch Foodbank has, in addition to their normal work, provided Christmas Support Parcels to families referred to them by local schools.

The majority of these families rarely need assistance from the foodbank but Christmas time can add additional pressures and for many families it can be a very long holiday period with many stresses.

Whitchurch Foodbank has therefore provided help to such families by offering to supply items for their store cupboard plus all that is needed to create a festive meal with turkey, trimmings, fresh vegetables, pudding and all that goes towards making a special day.

Through the generosity of the residents of Whitchurch, Wem and surrounding villages, the Foodbank has this year been able to provide these special Christmas parcels to 84 families – comprising 135 adults and 210 children.

Alan Scutt, chairman of Whitchurch Foodbank, said the response of so many in giving so generously with food and money donations has meant that in addition to the food they were also able to supply new toys to the children.

He said: "Providing this many parcels and getting them delivered was the biggest logistical challenge we have faced since commencing operations in 2013.

"In order to be able to marshal the food, pick the items for each individual family label the bags and have them ready for the driving teams to collect we needed a much larger premises than the space we have at Bargates Hall.

"Our thanks go to Zoe Dean and Whitchurch Town Council for allowing us to hire the Market Hall. It was just perfect."

The perimeter of the hall was marked out into timed delivery bays together with the name of the drivers and as each pick was completed it was placed ready for collection on December 22.

The trustees and management team of the foodbank have extended their sincere thanks to all the volunteers who helped transport stock to the Market Hall, pick, pack and then deliver the parcels to the grateful recipients.

"You were all truly amazing and worked so hard to achieve such a successful outcome," Alan added.

"All deliveries were undertaken on Tuesday, December 22 – when normal foodbank was also operating and delivering food to a further 20 homes.

"Commencing at 9am pairs of drivers arrived at the Market Hall every 10 minutes to be provided with their load.

"The pre-planned process worked very well and enabled all 84 deliveries to be completed by 1.30pm and many messages of thanks were received."

For many of the driving teams this was their first involvement in helping foodbank.

Alan added: "So many people made this exercise work so well it would be impossible to name them all but you know who you are and we thank you most sincerely.

"It was a massive team effort.

"We would like to place on record the support received from local businesses – Aviagen Turkeys, Tesco, Sainsburys, Four Ways, Drink Stop and Hopscotch & Skittles.

"We just could not have done it without all of you."