Asda and Fareshare have provided grants to more than 90 food banks across the UK since founding the Asda Fight Hunger Create Change partnership one year ago.
Alongside the Trussell Trust, Asda and Fareshare have provided over £2 million to redistribution groups tackling food poverty, from supplying food parcels to on-site debt advice.
The grants allow food banks to hire specialist advisers, create additional storage space and increase work to help people facing poverty in the UK.
The group has also developed a pilot project, described by Asda as “groundbreaking”, linking Fareshare and the Trussell Trust to deliver more fresh produce surplus to food banks. More than one thousand people have already benefitted from the pilot by receiving a greater variety of fresh fruit and vegetables according to Asda.
In the 12 months since the launch of the three-year campaign, the £20m partnership between Asda, Fareshare and the Trussell Trust has also funded the first phase of research into food bank use to date.
In the space of a year the partnership has also provided five million additional meals, after opening three new FareShare warehouses.
More than 2.2m meals were provided to community groups, including children’s breakfast clubs, women’s refuges and elderly lunch clubs, facilitated by the new warehouses, as well Asda chillers and vans. Over one million meals have been donated to food banks.
Andy Murray, chief customer officer at Asda said: “It’s been a year since we launched our partnership with Trussell Trust and FareShare, and I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made to change the face of food poverty in the UK.
“As we move into the second year of our campaign, we’ll continue to provide not just meals for people but support to help them out of poverty, and we thank our customers and colleagues for their ongoing support in our challenge to fight hunger”.
Simone Connolly, director of FareShare East Midlands, which has opened a new warehouse, said: “Since the opening of our brand new warehouse in Leicester, our impact has increased dramatically. The new warehouse is over twice the size of our previous premises, effectively doubling our capacity as we aim to provide over 500,000 additional meals to people in need over the next year.”
