Wednesday 15 June 2016

Scaring folks

The EFG did her stint at the Foodbank on Tuesday. She arrived at 9.30 for her session until 11.30 but by 10.30, everything was done that needed to be done. She has chatted with the other volunteers and apparently, this is happening more often these days. Why? Because they are just not getting the volume of donations that they usually get, so it takes far less time to sort and stack what they do get.

The consensus of opinion between the volunteers is that the EU referendum is scaring people, and so they are not donating in case they need their cash/stash of food themselves because of all the headlines in the news about what might happen either way. Their amateur philosophy is that if we leave the EU, the donations will fall even further as people worry about what might happen. They are worried, though, that even if the vote is to stay, the donations will not resume at the rate that is required to have adequate stocks on the shelves, because of the uncertainty about the way that the EU will develop.

They are still feeding people, but they don't have the resilience in the back room stock that they had a couple of months ago [well, they have plenty of baked beans at her particular Foodbank, but not a lot of anything else] and the donations boxes in the supermarkets around here are not filling up the way they did, she says.

I preached on gratitude this last Sunday [one of my favourite topics] and one of my points is that we should rely on God each and every day, and give thanks for all that he gives us on a daily basis. I try to remember that whether or not we are in the EU, people still need to be fed when they are hungry.  I am not into politics in a big way, and I just have my own little opinion, but even I can see that there is a lot of scaremongering going on on both sides, and it is hard to watch the damage it is doing.

2 comments:

Life In The Seniors Lane said...

I will join in prayer for the food bank. I believe all over the world the food banks are short as so much negativity in the world gets people anxious. God is good! All the time God is good. He has provided and will continue to provide.

Sue said...

Our local Tesco has just started to put out a trolley for people to donate food to the local foodbank. I'm always pleasantly surprised to see it filling up even over the course of me being in there for half an hour.

I do hope Foodbanks aren't going to struggle in future, they do such a wonderful job.

I'll continue to donate to Foodbanks as long as they exist.