Story Jim Paterson. Photos Jim Paterson, Alan Wilson
Visitors arrive to select their Christmas meal food
Food Facts Friends Foodbank provides Christmas meals on Christmas Eve
Over
300 baskets of Christmas food arrived at St Mungo’s church hall
on Christmas Eve, covering the complete floor, ready to feed over 70
families, several hundred adults and their children, from across
Midlothian.
 From
the moment they published pictures and location on Facebook it reached
over 6000 people within an hour, rising to over 14000 by 10pm. By next
morning that had risen to over 24500, a number they have never seen
before.
This is the fourth year Food Facts Friends have
offered Christmas Eve food in addition to its normal Monday opening at
Penicuik and Dalkeith, and Friday in Penicuik.
Over Christmas & New Year they were the only foodbank open in Midlothian.
 Any
time of year is stressful for families unable to put any food on the
table. Christmas is no exception, if anything even more challenging.
Everyone else is feasting, but for those without, it is jam on toast if
your lucky!
Thanks go to Marks and Spencer’s at Straiton
and Morningside, Aldi Cameron Toll and Gilmerton, Sainsbury's Straiton,
JB foods Loanhead, McQueen dairies milk, Lidl and Greggs Penicuik, for
donating all their end of day perishable food.
Food arrives at St. Mungo's church hall
A
special thanks to our supporters Bishop’s Move for collecting the
food, using the largest removal truck in their Penicuik fleet, and the
crew, who loaded and unloaded the truck, as big as a double decker
bus. It was full to the roof when it arrived at St. Mungo’s
church hall. Thanks also to Wilson Laurie landscaping from Auchendinny,
whose van also collected from some of the donating stores.
Volunteers keep restocking the supplies
Thanks
to all our volunteers who helped organise and distribute the food.
Without their help we could not manage the distribution of so much food
to so many people. No one who visited went away empty handed.
The food just keeps on coming
Some
families, unable to get to Penicuik, received their food parcels by
personal delivery. No one deserves to celebrate the birth of Jesus in
poverty with no food.
Food Facts Friends, here to help those in distress at a time they need it most.
Food Facts Friends foodbank returns Friday 27 December then weekly
Monday and Friday each week - 10.30am to 1.00pm.
Published - 29 December 2019
|
Home
| Services | Church Groups | Events | News
| History| Contact Us 
