Speaker meeting via Zoom with Rev'd James Hurst

Building on the established Make Lunch project, which involved cooking and serving hot lunches one day a week during school holidays, hosting families with FSM children, the Our Lady Immaculate and Saint Etheldreda RC Parish and the Newmarket Community Church replaced the lunch by the sourcing, picking, packing and delivering of food parcels to these families, when it became impossible to host a lunch. 

The first thirteen parcels were delivered on 7th April, but as word spread, via the local schools Pupil Premium contacts, we were delivering 57 a week by the end of April, rising to a peak of 86 in week commencing 20th June. Finally, we had 91 families with 218 children and 128 adults on our books. 

Along with Churches Together in Newmarket and District over the 5 months  61 volunteers assisted with food parcel deiveries. These volunteers gave their time the use of their cars and fuel free of charge, and strong bonds were built between them and the families to whom they delivered, in some cases for all of the 21 weeks. One heartwarming story is that the driver of the van provided by Godolphin to do the 2-hour round trip to pick up the FareShare stuff each Friday from Ipswich, disobeyed his bosses when told to stop after 8 weeks and insisted on continuing (eventually with the boss’s blessing!) 

Initially the plan was simply to help out families that the FSM filter had designated “low income”, during the Easter holiday. However, schools did not fully reopen until September, so we resolved to continue for as long as we could afford to do so. With family incomes reducing due to furlough and redundancies, and work falling off for the self-employed; referrals to us grew.  However, it was not all bad news. As word spread to poor families so did it to wealthier ones on the same mailing list (a happy mistake by a school secretary!) and donations came in just when they were needed to keep the momentum going. Local firms through the vehicle of the Newmarket Festival also donated generously, and ended up providing 74% of the funding required by the total project. 

It is difficult to forecast the level of need for the future, however anticipated job losses will put more families on the bread line. We prepared up to 100 food parcels for half term, despite the government restrictions limiting the teams to 6 people packing at any one time, and are planning Christmas hampers ready for end of term.