Littlehampton & District Food Bank

Littlehampton Rotary Club were represented on a working party in 2009, set up by Littlehampton Town Council, when the Food Bank was set up as "The Littlehampton Larder."  The Baptist Church in Fitzalan Road offered a room for the "Larder" to use for storage.  Our Rotary Club offered to buy and install shelving and two Rotarians bought, built and installed the wooden shelving and secured it to the walls. That room is still in use today but the shelving has now been replaced but since those early days we have donated thousands of pounds of food.  We do not hand over money but one of our Rotarians goes shopping three or four times every two months, once we have found out what shortages the Food Bank have at that time.  For the past five Christmas's we have taken 50 Christmas Food Parcels, filled with carefully selected Seasonal items and all wrapped in Christmas Paper, into the Food Bank, with a sticker saying, "A Christmas Gift from the Rotary Club of Littlehampton."  We will be providing 50 Food Parcels again this year.

The Food Bank aims to provide for people within the Littlehampton catchment area who have perhaps fallen on hard times or are in financial crisis.  The local aid agencies like Age UK, Citizens Advice Bureau etc., are issued with vouchers by the Food Bank. Then people in need attend the Food Bank with the vouchers and these allow three meals per day per individual or family member.  The Food Bank allows three lots of vouchers per crisis. Hopefully, each person or family would only have two bouts of crisis per year.

The Littlehampton & District Food Bank these days are part of the Trussell Trust, a registered charity which oversees and administers Food Banks throughout England and Wales but does not provide food and in fact charges each Food Bank for it's administration facilities.