Fair Frome the locally-based charity which runs the food bank, furniture bank, community lunches and other projects designed to meet the basic needs of the most vulnerable in the town, have just announced the impact of schemes they ran over the summer to tackle “Holiday Hunger”.
Bob Ashford the chair of trustees said, “During term-time, many young people in the town receive free school meals. During holidays they don’t have this opportunity and the result unfortunately is not only that families already struggling financially have to find the additional resources to feed themselves and their children, but the reality is that many just can’t do this.
We know this from the take up of the food bank which doubled during the month of August when we provided over 250 bags of food to families in the town. In addition, we provided schools in Frome with 97 bags of food to a total of 27 families, 83 children ranging from 5 months to 17 years to distribute to families that the staff believed would struggle over the holidays. None of this could have been achieved without the hard work of our volunteers and the many anonymous people who contribute the food and cash necessary for us to do our work.”
This summer also, Fair Frome partnered with Purple Elephant who run the Children’s Festival and summer holiday activities. Thanks to the generosity of Bistro Lotte and Asda, Fair Frome provided over 250 meals to children and families attending – a large number provided at no cost to families on free school meals. The charity hopes this will now become a regular part of their activity over school holidays in the future.
