Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal hits £5,000 target in less than a week

There’s been an overwhelming response to the Stray Ferret’s Christmas Appeal for local food charity, Resurrected Bites.

Our target of £5,000 was reached over the weekend – less than a week after we launched the appeal. Public donations now stand at £7,638.

With Harrogate firm Techbuyer generously match funding the first £5,000 of public donations – it means our overall total is now £12,638.

Many of the donations have been given anonymously so whoever you are, we would like to thank you and everyone else who has generously given money in these difficult economic times.

THANK YOU!

But we keep going. As we have a few weeks to go before the appeal ends at midnight on Christmas Eve, we have now raised the overall target to £20,000.

This would give Resurrected Bites almost three months of operating costs, as each month costs the charity a minimum of £7,500 to run the cafes and grocery stores. If you want to know more about the charity please read the stories below.

Read More: 

Michelle Hayes of Resurrected Bites says to hit the target so quickly is amazing:

“I am blown away by the generosity of so many people who have got the total to £7,558 in under a week. This equates to a month’s basic operating costs and with Techbuyer’s amazing donation of 5k match funding on top, we are heading towards covering our costs for two months. We have a lot of anonymous donors and so I have not been able to thank them directly but please know that every penny means so much.

I know there was a significant amount of anxiety amongst some of our service users when they saw the headline that Res Bites might close and I said at the time, I was determined to ensure we wouldn’t close as we know so many rely on our services.

In the same way that we need to talk about mental health more, we also need to talk about food poverty more..I hope these articles [on the Stray Ferret] help to end the stigma and encourage more people to come forward for help as we don’t want anyone to go hungry.”

Please don’t let anyone go hungry this Christmas — Resurrected Bites needs your support.

The more money raised, the more people it can feed at a time of rising demand for its services.

Thank you again. To donate click here. 

 

Ripon pie company lends its weight to food charity

Yorkshire Handmade Pies, a company based on the outskirts of Ripon, has formed a partnership to support the charity FoodCycle.

The environmentally-focused charity runs community projects across the country serving meals made from surplus food which would otherwise have gone to waste.

Fresh, raw ingredients donated by local supermarkets and food outlets are collected by FoodCycle volunteers who then use the surplus food to cook three-course meals.

Prior to the covid-19 pandemic, the meals were produced to help address issues of loneliness for people living in food poverty, by creating spaces for them to meet and have a meal together.

Since the coronavirus crisis, FoodCycle, which has produced more that 270,000 meals since its formation ten years ago, has diversified to provide take-aways still helping to improve nutrition and reducing hunger by cooking healthy meals for those in need.

Read more:

Now,Yorkshire Handmade Pies is adding its weight to the charity’s efforts. For every box of pies purchased, Yorkshire Handmade Pies will donate 30p of the sale price to FoodCycle to help them to expand their work in local communities and fund more projects in more regions.

FoodCycle also aims to change attitudes to food by cooking with surplus ingredients, spreading their passion for food and the environment, which Yorkshire Handmade Pies fully supports too.

Its pies are delivered frozen because frozen food generates 47% less wastage than chilled food.

Company founder James Sturdy said:

“We wanted to support a charity which aligns with our ethos around food wastage, environmental responsibilities and wellbeing beliefs.

“FoodCycle supports a wide variety of people from low-income families, people affected by homelessness to those experiencing physical and mental health problems. They exist to ensure communities have access to healthy food and they need our support now, more than ever.”

Yorkshire Handmade Pies, which has premises in Melmerby, is a member of the Living Wage Foundation and the Good Business Charter – a voluntary accreditation scheme which recognises responsible business practices.