The end of March marked one year since Abbey Food Hub first opened. Celebrating this milestone is a great time to reflect on the past year and the amazing things that have been achieved in that time.
When we first opened our doors, it was as an emergency response to the first national lockdown. We wanted to support the community by ensuring that everyone had access to food. We’re proud to have provided this and much more to Abbey.
We’ve achieved our aim of keeping people fed during the pandemic. Each week we see over 160 visitors to the Food Hub and offer delivery to those unable to attend in person. And we’ve saved an eye-watering 25 tons (25,000kg) of food from going to waste.
However, some of our proudest achievements are not necessarily linked to the amount of food distributed or saved from landfill or even to the number of mouths fed (although we’re very proud of this too!). They’re linked to people!
For many, the Food Hub has acted as a source of human interaction. A place to see a friendly face during periods of loneliness and isolation, not only for visitors but for volunteers and members of the Abbey People team too. The friendships formed in the queue and between volunteers and visitors over time has been wonderful to witness.
We’ve also been astounded by the volunteer effort over the past year. More than 70 people have given their time to support the Food Hub, many of whom have volunteered weekly for months on end – bringing energy and enthusiasm to each session. We truly could not have done any of this without you.
A special thank you to:-
- Cambridge Sustainable Food for their support and supplying us with a vast quantity of food every week.
- National Lottery Community Fund for their grant funding to make this work possible.
- Cambridge Coronavirus Grant Fund for their grant funding for the Food Hub.
- Cambridge Water for their grant funding towards this work.
- CoFarm for donating a big portion of their first crop to us, giving us access to locally-grown, organic food.
- Fortnum and Mason for giving us all the opportunity to try food we would not normally have access to.
- Lindi Holmes for collecting supermarket donations for us pretty much every day for a year!
- Barnwell Baptist Church for giving us a home for our first year and putting up with food appearing in strange places.
We look forward to working with the community for a long time to come!
