Shrewsbury Food Hub Pledge Appeal

Transcript

00:00So I'm Cherry, I'm from the Shrewsbury Food Hub and we're currently in our depot over in Battlefield

00:05where we sort out all the food that we've collected in from all the supermarkets, farms and

00:10manufacturers around Shropshire. So we started in 2016, so it's been eight years now and what we do,

00:17we started really small just collecting from a couple of stores in Shrewsbury. We had five

00:21volunteers, now we've got over 170. We collect from over 40 stores and farms and factories around

00:29Shropshire and then we bring it here, check it's all okay, stop that food from going to waste,

00:34which is the whole point of us. We don't want any good food to be thrown away because it's really

00:40bad for the environment and it can be used. So we collect it all, bring it here, check that it's all

00:46okay and then we divide it up and send it out to 65 local community groups and charities to save

00:53them a bit of money, help the environment and get the food used. So our community is everything to

00:59us, it's what we deliver to, it's where we collect from, so it's really important to us

01:04that we can carry on helping them. We have lots of community events, you'll see me and some of

01:10our volunteers popping up at summer fairs and things like that to collect donations to keep

01:16us going. We also have to make grant applications because we're a charity, so we have to

01:24fund our activities. People tend to think that what we do here doesn't cost very much

01:30because we get the food in from the suppliers for free, but actually it costs us over £300,000 a

01:36year to run because we've got our van which we have to put fuel in and maintenance, we've got

01:43the depot which costs over £17,000 a year and then all the utility costs which have obviously

01:49increased recently with the cost of living, so our energy prices are really expensive which is

01:56because we've got loads of freezers here and we've got a walk-in chiller as well and a walk-in

02:01freezer which all take up lots of energy, so there's lots to fund and then we've got a really

02:06small paid team of staff, we've got just under six full-time equivalent to 170 volunteers. We have

02:12got a live crowdfunding campaign at the moment on Space Hive which is giving us the opportunity to

02:18receive a £10,000 grant from Shropshire Council but we will only receive that £10,000 if we reach

02:25our target. Our target's just over £19,000, we're at £14,000 at the moment so we've still got a

02:31little way to go and there's not very long left. So how it works is because we need to reach the

02:37target, any money that somebody donates is actually a pledge. If we don't reach the target then those

02:44pledges get returned to the backer, so any little can help. We've had about just under 50 pledges so

02:53far and it will all help to build up that target.