Foodbank on menu to help feed city’s needy

The Hull Foodbank will give out three days supplies to people struggling to make ends meet.

Project manager Sarah Sidwell went through a lean stretch earlier this year when she was out of work for several months.

She said: “A lot of it isn’t really discussed because people don’t like to ask for help. When myself and my husband were struggling we just shared it with my parents, but it was really difficult.

“We think there’s a massive hidden need, which is why we work with doctors and social services.”

Mrs Sidwell, who has an office at Hull Community Church on Newland Avenue, added: “According to the last census in 2001, 60,000 people were living under the poverty line and that was when we were in a boom – now we are in the middle of the recession. There is a real need because of the amount of people having a cut in wages, having their benefits delayed, different work issues and coming up to winter, the unexpected gas bill.”

The Foodbank is having its first supermarket collection at Morrisons on the city’s Bransholme estate on Saturday between 11am and 4pm. Shoppers will be handed lists of goods - everything from cereals to UHT milk, pasta, rice and tinned fruit –and asked to buy items to donate to the Foodbank.

To get food people will need to be referred by “voucher agencies” – including Hull Community Church, Jubilee Church, Barnardos, the Minerva Project and Community Legal Advice Centre.

Foodbanks have been opening at a record rate across the country as the economy stagnates.

The first foodbank was opened by the Trussell Trust more than a decade ago and the first in East Yorkshire was opened in Hornsea earlier this month.

The Trussell Trust has launched 60 new foodbanks in the past year and fed more than 61,500 people nationwide in 2010-11, 50 per cent more than the previous year.