Money raised at Richard Taunton Sixth Form College’s free family Winter Fest will help Southampton City Mission feed people over Christmas.
The college donated £230 to the charity, which runs five foodbanks in the city, raised from a raffle, guess the name of the teddy and guess the number of sweets in the jar at the festival on November 30. The top raffle prize of a PlayStation 5 was donated by Frost Creative in Southampton.
The charity’s Basics Bank manager Vicky McKillen said the donation will help it buy stock for the foodbanks. “We’ve found in the last couple of years that food donations have slightly dropped, and we think that’s in correlation to like the cost of living,” she said.
“For the last 27 years the foodbank has essentially not had to spend any money on food and now since the end of 2022 we now have to regularly buy food in so we do a big order once a week. Lots of donations that people give us go directly to buying food for those who need it.
“I hope everyone had a really great Winter Fest, we really appreciate the donation. It will go to help those in Southampton who need some extra support, especially at Christmas.”
She said donations help the charity maintain its range of support for families and individuals. As well as the foodbanks, it also runs a clothing bank and four community pantry projects, where members pay a weekly £5 subscription to collect up to 13 items of fresh and frozen food. “It is designed to be like a community so the people who go each week get to know each other and the volunteers,” she said.
“It’s great that people can donate to us and then we facilitate using those donations, so any money or food or anything that comes to us we can then give that out to those who need it. We have a lot of clients who, through no fault of their own, have to use the foodbank and it’s great that we can support them.”
“Donations like this really help us to continue the work that we’re doing. We’ve gotten so much bigger in the last couple of years because people’s emergencies are getting far greater and lasting much longer so the things like this that happen annually are fantastic.”
Find out more about the charity’s work here.
Pictured: Richard Taunton Sixth Form students, left, Chidinma Salvagain, Joshua Charles, Hanna Salek, and Southampton City Mission’s Basics Bank manager Vicky McKillen, receiving a Winter Fest cheque from Richard Taunton students.