December figure of 5,634 meals delivered was the most ever in a single month.
Food for 5,634 meals was provided for 626 Food Hub clients and family members during December – making it our busiest month ever, 468 meals more than in December 2021, our previous busiest month.
It took to 41,328 overall the number of meals provided in 2022, which became our second busiest year after the 48,987 meals in 2020 at the height of the Covid pandemic.
On Wednesday 21st December we held a double, morning and afternoon, session providing food in total for 143 adults and children (46 clients and 97 family members) – the most ever on a last operating day before Christmas.
Around 45 volunteers were involved during the day, packing and delivering food parcels, receiving, sorting and storing donations, refilling shelves, recording data, and in some cases a mixture of all of these.
Around a dozen volunteers came in for nearly four hours on Tuesday 27th December to sort donations and refill shelves in time for the two delivery sessions on Wednesday 28th, when 792 meals were provided, and Saturday 31st when a further 477 meals were despatched. A team also came in on Tuesday 3rd January before the resumption of normal Monday sorting/restocking sessions on 9th January.
We are hugely grateful to all the volunteers and donors who contributed their time and resources and made it such a successful operation. We received a number of messages later, including these from two clients:
“I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the extremely plentiful food you delivered. So generous. Thank you.”
“Thanks for everything and to everyone involved in Purley Food Hub, you have made Christmas for me and many others.”