Kettering Food Bank needs donations

Jane Calcott, trustee of Kettering Food Bank, details the increase in demand for food parcels

Transcript

00:00 This year we've seen unprecedented demand in food from new people and people who've

00:11 used us in the past. We're also finding our shelves are incredibly bare for this time

00:17 of year. This is actually a first for us that this year we have had to buy so much food

00:23 in. We've just had a delivery this week actually of just under £2,000 worth of food

00:29 and our shelves are still looking pretty bare. Sometimes both parents are working and they're

00:35 still finding it hard to manage. It's not only housing costs and food costs, it's also

00:41 fuel and car costs as well, which is necessary if you need to get to work. We're also seeing

00:48 a rise in old age pensioners, those who don't have private pensions coming to us, who just

00:54 cannot cope now. Some of it is due to past debt that they had last winter when costs

00:59 were so high and they're still paying those costs and accumulating now will be the costs

01:06 this winter, which we are not looking forward to because if people are saying, for instance,

01:11 putting £20 on their gas meters and having £7 or £8 taken out due to debt, then they've

01:17 got to top their gas meter up more than they would normally do, which is then eating into

01:23 food money, which is what is causing a lot of people problems at this moment in time.

01:27 And bear in mind, this is the end of September, it's warm, it's not cold and we have the winter

01:32 coming. Along with other food banks, we are really, really worried about what the future

01:37 is going to hold this winter. People are definitely going hungry. We have parents in particular

01:44 who go hungry because they want to make sure that their children are fed. They often say

01:49 that they haven't actually eaten apart from an odd slice of toast for three or four days.

01:54 We've already had a couple of schools contact us and a couple of churches regarding harvest

02:00 festival collections, which is, this time of year is always tremendous for us. We do

02:05 get harvest collections and when we get Christmas getting a little bit nearer, people are always

02:10 exceedingly generous because it is Christmas. The problem is that last year, the Christmas

02:17 and the harvest food and the other donations managed to last us right through until June

02:21 or July. This year, we've been buying food in since March and that's because of a lack

02:28 of donations and also an increase in clientele. We have had in the, for the month of August,

02:34 a 65% increase this year on the same time last year, which is quite frightening.