Summer Recap: Foodbanks

Changing Politics

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Over the summer we're re-releasing all our campaign features without the topical jokes at the top, so you don't have to go through old news to get to the stuff that's still really important. This is the feature from the fifth episode, which went out at the start of the school holidays - a time when more children than ever will be relying on food banks. We spoke to Garry Lemon from the Trussell Trust, a food bank charity, and one of our own listeners, Benjamin Moore, who has been a food bank user in the past.

Because the line wasn't great, here's a transcript of Ben's comments:

"Because of my wife's disability we had a support worker from a local organisation who used to come to us every two weeks and check out what was going on, and check we were alright, and one of the things she said to us one week was, 'Would you like a food bank voucher?'. I hadn't really thought about it before, but things were very tight at the time. Basically we were at that stage in a flat where the roof had a major leak, and so our bedroom was incredibly damp all the time. And this was during the winter, so a lot of our money was going on electricity. We were at the point of spending what we had left on food, after we'd paid for rent and electricity."

"If it's donated, they'll pass it out. So what they give you is non-perishable items. So it's mainly things like tins of stuff, and they'll give you rice of pasta and they'll give you breakfast cereal, you know, things they can accrue and keep for a reasonable length of time. But it's not all functional, so they will give you bars of chocolate or crisps, things that you might like as opposed to stuff that just works. If you're going to donate to a food bank, just think about what you would want if you found yourself in that position."

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