Salford Foodbank helped 13,238 people in crisis last year by giving out food parcels, but visits are up by 50 per cent this year as the Foodbank prepare themselves for the Christmas season.
Paul Harrison, who works at Salford Foodbank, said: “Every year is up on the last. We get frantically busy [in December].
“Last year the amount of people we fed went up by 100 each week throughout December, with the last week reaching 600 people.”
This comes after new figures, taken from research by Loughborough University on behalf of the End Child Poverty Coalition were published in June, 2023.
The figures show that a staggering 302,158 children in the Diocese of Salford (which covers Greater Manchester and parts of Lancashire) are living in poverty.
This figure is up by 73,303 when compared with the same time last year – a shocking increase of 24%.
Paul went on to explain how donations differ throughout the year: “December is probably the one month of the year where donations match what we give out.
“Company, school and church donations go up at Christmas time as people are getting in the festive spirit so our donations keep up.”
Paul sighed: “But it’s nothing like that for the rest of the year. We have to buy a fair amount of food- roughly 40% at the moment, to keep up with the need for food parcels.”
The Salford Foodbank are seeded by the Trussell Trust, who announced in April that they had given out nearly 3 million food parcels between April 2022-April 2023, as the UK cost of living crisis helped drive more than 750,000 to food banks for the first time.
Featured image credit: CNN
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