The Christmas Foodbank Campaign Officially starts today.

Today's the day!!!!!


Well there you have it, today's the day that my Christmas Foodbank Campaign for Woking Foodbank officially gets underway to help people in crisis.  I seriously cannot believe where this year has gone, but to those people that are in crisis, Christmas is probably the last thing on their mind and indeed its the time of the year when we are all under so much pressure to be happy, but if you don't have the simple things in life, like food how is that ever going to be possible?

I have actually already been receiving cash donations which will enable me or more importantly my mum to go out and do some food shopping, my mum is great she is so frugal she gets all the bargains which means that those food parcels will go even further and plus she has far more time than me and its about all the family getting involved in whatever way possible and this is my mum's way of getting involved, its great she loves it, to be honest I loath food shopping, but sometimes you have to do the things that you dislike, right?

My first food parcel arrived last week, would you like to see what was in it? would you? I bet you would, oh go on then, but this is the one and only time that I will be showing you as its not really the amount or whats in the parcel, its the fact that you have given that counts....

Well here it is........as you can see there are a variety of items ranging from a Christmas biscuit selection box, to aftershave for men.  These are probably luxury items that a person struggling at Christmas would not be purchasing for themselves as the essentials are more important.....we can help, however little you can give, it will help someone somewhere and you never know it may even put a smile on their face knowing that someone else has thought about them, I mean at the end of the day we all want to be thought about my someone, don't we?

This week has been full of highs and lows, at one stage I thought I had secured lots of carrier bags for FREE as that is one other thing that the foodbank require especially now that they are 5-10p per BAG, that's extra expense.  Anyway, as I said I had sorted out the carrier bags for free from a well established company in Woking, who actually said that they would deliver them to the office for me, well a week passed and still no carrier bags, so off I went armed with my notebook and camera to get that all important interview for social media coverage for the company, which of course is what I am doing in exchange for cash donations or goodies, only to be told when I got there that actually there had been a misunderstanding, well I get that its everyone's option to change their mind, but I know that free is free so not sure where the misunderstanding came into play, but anyhow, with head held high I thanked them for their time and left with my notebook empty........  Seriously, this has now left me with no carrier bags hmmmmm what to do next?

I am not one to give up easily so I put my thinking cap on and I got in touch with the area manager for CO-OP, convenience stores, Gareth.  After all this is a local campaign so its great to get local businesses involved.   I explained to Gareth via email my plight of the carrier bags and would the CO-OP like to come to the rescue? to my delight Gareth said "YES we would love to help", well can you imagine, that was like music to my ears.......carrier bags are back on the tick box.  Its weird really I never thought that I would get that excited about getting free carrier bags, but there you go.

Here is a piccie of Julie Nicholls the deputy manager of The CO-OP in St Johns, its a great little convenience store right in the heart of St Johns and ya know its a busy little shop too even at 8am in the morning which is when I visited.   Julie is a local lady from Knaphill and has been working for the Co-Op for in excess of 30 years and has been working at the St Johns branch for 6 years.  Julie has very kindly donated 1000, yes a 1000 carrier bags for FREE which is amazing and the promise of more if we need them.  I cant express my gratitude enough as I said above the Foodbank do not sell their carrier bags to the clients so hopefully this will enable them to save a bit more cash to be spent on food!

So to the company that let me down, who shall remain nameless with no social media coverage for their business, its totally your loss and to Gareth the area manager of The Co-Op and Julie Nicholls, Deputy Manager of St Johns branch many many thanks for your help.  Welcome aboard my Christmas Foodbank Campaign, I shall promote your business via Facebook, Twitter and even a little ole mention on Radio Woking!!!!!

Now that my campaign is underway, Click on the  Shopping list, these are items that are required.  Remember, my drop off points for food parcels are Brookwood Club and also Brookwood Post Office/Bakers Dozen all during working hours or alternatively, drop me an email trudifletcher@rocketmail.com or if you know where I live in the village feel free to knock on my door.....

Thats it for this week, but stay tuned for more news.....

Woking Foodbank - Brookwood Village Christmas Campaign

This week's blog is all about Woking Foodbank and why I decided to get involved.

Did you know that the foodbank is there to help people in crisis and this year it will be its 5th year in operation. People in crisis will be provided with three days worth of emergency food, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

So whats in a parcel you may ask, well a typical food parcel may consist of Breakfast cereals, pasta, rice, pasta sauce, tinned beans, tinned meats, tinned vegetables, tinned fruit, tea/coffee, sugar, biscuits and snacks.  The Foodbank will usually adapt the food parcel to meet the individual needs, for example gluten free, halal or vegetarian.  

Woking Foodbank are currently supporting around 30 individuals and families every week!!! That's a lot!!!!!

There is also lots of other things going on in the Foodbank, including various other companies including Jigsaw Project who provide, clothes, toys and baby equipment for families that have kiddies aged 0-5 years, The Kitchen - learning to cook on a budget is one of the things that happen in there amongst others, Steam Ahead which can provide clothes, shoes, handbags etc, CV's and confidence building for the ladies only to help them get back into employment.  The Cosy is a community coffee shop all the money that is raised in here goes back into the foodbank.

There are several branches under the Woking Foodbank the main being The Lighthouse in the High Street, Woking (for those of you that know Woking well, its where the old Courts Furniture building was), The Salvation Army Corps, in Sythwood, Goldsworth Park and The Mascot Hub in Dartmouth Avenue, Sheerwater.  Please check out the website for the opening times of each branch.

You can be referred  to the Foodbank via frontline sources, including your GP, Social Services Citizens Advice, Job Centre Plus and Woking Borough Council to name, but a few.  You will then be provided with vouchers which you can take to the foodbank and exchange for food to cover you for the three days.  

Its hard to accept that in such a affluent area as Woking which is so close to London that we need these facilities, but I have to say that I visited Woking Foodbank in the summer to find out a little bit more about the services that they provide and whilst I was there I talked to one of their previous service users, Michael.  Michael's story really touched my heart.  Michael aged a mere 62 years had been living in his car for the past 7 months before being put in touch with the foodbank having not eaten for 3-4 days.  Michael had also been visiting the Peacocks Shopping Centre for washing facilities, which must have been extremely tough.  Michael said that he was lucky enough to be referred to the foodbank and in his words they saved him as he was at the point of suicide.  This must have been an extremely tough time for Michael, you cannot even begin to imagine what he must have been going through.

Michael has fortunately now sorted himself out with sheltered accommodation which obviously is a massive improvement from living in his car.  Can you even imagine living in your car for any length of time let alone 7 odd months during those cold winter months and stifling summers that we have had?

Last year some of Brookwood villagers and various companies that got involved in my Christmas Foodbank campaign provided just under a ton of food, which provided up to an additional 90+ families with extra support over Christmas, plus the service users.

I even went out with my wheelbarrow to collect the heavy parcels, but this year I am lucky enough to have upgraded from the wheelbarrow to the very lovely sleigh that was converted by my very good friend Phil Bayliss and kindly donated by Roger, store manager at Homebase, Woking.  We had two lovely and huge parcels very kindly donated by Brookwood Pre-School. I know that they currently have vacancies, so if you have a little one that needs placing in a pre-school why don't you give them a ring to see if they can help you out.

So my question to you is - would you like to get involved? if so, its really easy all you have to do is drop me an email trudifletcher@rocketmail.com  collect a few items of food from the list below and I will arrange to collect your food parcel and deliver to it to the foodbank on your behalf.  It's as simple as that.

So what do they need? here are some of the items listed below:

Tins of biscuits
Christmas cake
Biscuits for cheese
Crisps/pringles/savory snacks
Christmas sweets/chocolate treats for children
Selection boxes
Christmas chocolate boxes/roses/quality street
Long life sponge puddings
Healthy bars
John West long life pasta salad
Long life juice
Long life mini rice puddings
Long life custard
Canned fruit
Long Life milk
Canned Spaghetti
Canned peas
Canned meat or chicken casserole
Canned tomatoes
Canned soup
Powder potato
Instant coffee
Canned vegetables
Vegetable oil
Ketchup/Brown sauce
Mayonnaise
Marmite
Peanut Butter
Honey
Clothes washing detergent
Washing up liquid
Toilet paper
Personal toiletries - excluding sanitary towels, but as this is a Christmas campaign you may also like to provide :

Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, bread sauce, sponge pudding, mince pies, pickled onions, cranberry sauce etc.  You know the sort of thing that you would perhaps purchase for yourself as a little treat at Christmas....

Or if all else fails they are in desperate need of bags for life!!!!

So as you can see the list is pretty extensive, but when I visited a few weeks back the stock was pretty low and in some cases they had absolutely nothing of one item.  I was horrified to see just how little stock the foodbank actually had. 

I have to say that my posters are now up in various places, including Brookwood Club, Brookwood train station (we might be lucky enough to get a few commuters passing through to London involved),  Brookwood Pre-School, Brookwood Post Office/Bakers, so you can drop food parcels at any of those places from here on in, with the exception of the train station for obvious reasons.  I am lucky enough to say  that cash donations have already started to roll in and I have been contacted by various companies asking if they can get involved and of course the answer is an absolute YES I would love you to get involved.  If we work together we can achieve GREAT THINGS.

My first company cash donation was from Fletcher Autos.  I visited this local motorcycle business in Cherry Street in Woking this week, to ask if they would like to get involved and of course the answer was yes.  Fletcher Autos have provided a cash injection which means that I can purchase some of the much needed food off of the list above.  Fletcher Autos can help you with all your motorbike needs, ranging from servicing, repairs, MOTs and refurbishing.  Owner, Kevin Fletcher has been in the motorcycle trade for in excess of 30 years, so if you have a motorbike that might need Kevin's attention, please do look him up on facebook or alternatively give him a call on : 01483-751828.  Its a very friendly and local business.

It would not be possible to organise the Christmas Foodbank Collection without your help, so I am going to thank you all in advance for getting involved and of course donating.  I know its an extremely busy time of the year when we are thinking about our own families, but I cant thank you enough for also thinking about another family somewhere in Woking who is perhaps not as fortunate as ourselves.

During the course of the last campaign I had a lot of people ask me where the donations would be going and the answer is as it was then to the local people in the community.  This food will not be going abroad, it will remain here and I know that this was a concern to a few people.

There are currently in excess of 50 volunteers that help out, I bet you didn't know that?

So the campaign officially starts next Monday, so I am hoping that you are all going to get involved as much as you can, its really exciting lots going on, so if you would like to be part of my campaign then please do comment on my blog or alternatively, drop me an email trudifletcher@rocketmail.com

I will continue with the blogs throughout the campaign to let you know how its going and also to keep you updated with the shopping list as I know that this can change from time to time.....

Radio Woking - The Big Christmas Foodbank Campaign

Well well well, the transformation of the trolley cart has gone down an absolute storm, so thank you all for the lovely comments and also massive thanks to my good friend Phil Bayliss of PA Carpentry he is such a lovely chap and his talent is clearly not recognised enough...If he can help you with any carpentry needs do give me a shout. Here's another picture, just in case you missed it!!!!

This week's blog is about Radio Woking , how I managed to get that first interview and how the station helped with my Christmas foodbank campaign.

Many of you didn't even realise that we had a local radio station and to be fair I didn't even know it was there until I was contacted by Zahir Ahmed who presents The We Love Woking Show, Wednesday evenings, but once my Foodbank Christmas Campaign started many more tuned in to hear the interviews so hopefully Radio Woking now have a few more listeners......

Radio Woking is situated within Winston Church School, St Johns and is a radio station within the community.  It started out as a student radio called "Yay Radio" I believe for a number of years and in the words of Justin Coll - Radio Station and IT manager for the school that hosts the Radio Station,  "5 years ago we were really lucky to get some money for the school to create some recording studios and the radio station was brought into the same facility"  and bang the community radio station was born..........In that time it was started as an internet station and Ofcom did a small DAB trial which Radio Woking was lucky enough to be part of with British Forces Broadcasting who are running the transmitter at the school and in Aldershot, it has given the Radio Station such a great opportunity to get lots of coverage.

They have lots of presenters and most of them are volunteers covering lots of time slots and some of them have been asked to present BBC Surrey sports.  The guys are amazing in my view and cover so much stuff about the local area, you should tune in you never know where it may lead you!!!!

So I mentioned above that I was contacted by Zahir Ahmed back in 2016 asking whether I would like to attend the studio for a live interview,  Zahir presents The We Love Woking show on Wednesday evenings with his co-host Jackie Witney between the hours 6-8pm, but back in 2016 Zahir was co-hosting with Tanya Isaiah again on Wednesday evenings, but between the hours of 8-10pm. Zahir is now in his fourth year of presenting at Radio Woking. 

Yep that's all of us in the
studio

Now again some of you may know this, but to others this may be a surprise, but I am part of a local Bellydance troupe called BellyTricks Bellydance based in Brookwood Village and during the summer we are extremely busy with gigs getting out and about and showing the local community some of our Bellydance moves.  9 of the 20+ strong troupe attended the studio at Winston Churchill School to talk about being part of the local community and also talking about Bellydance and yes we did a few shimmies on air as did the presenters!!!!  it was a squeeze to get 9 of us in the studio, plus two presenters, but such good fun and yes we do get about a lot in the summer, so if you would like to invite us anywhere get in quick because we get booked really fast in the summer.  We are regulars at Knaphill Fete.

Zahir & Tanya doing their thing!!!



Anyway I am digressing, back to the interviews for the Christmas Foodbank Campaign.  Jon Andrews joined Radio Woking around 18 months ago to celebrate everything that is good about Woking and he is passionate about sharing that with the listeners.

A bit like Zahir, Jon picked up on one of my tweets, you may have guessed by now that I do a lot of twittering, you can keep up with me if you like on Twitter on @trudimfletcher  - so that tweet mentioned that I was intending on doing a Christmas Collection on behalf of Woking Foodbank although they didn't know it at the time.  I hadn't even discussed it with them, I just thought I would put it together, at the end of the day anybody can do it, but sometimes people just need someone to organise it for them, that's one thing that I am absolutely fab at, organising, just ask anyone that knows me, trust me they would agree.   I realised that I could help some of these people that are struggling, but how was I going to go about getting the word out there for all to see or in this case hear?  Well what better way other than Radio......So Jon contacted me via Twitter, saying "this sounds really good what you are doing, how would you like to do an interview about it on live Radio?" well to be honest it frightened the life out of me, but hey what a great opportunity, live radio...so I took the plunge and the following week I was on air albeit it over the telephone. I am not gunna lie, I was surrounded with my papers at home and of course I didn't have a clue what Jon was going to ask me, but I think its fair to say that Jon and I have struck a great friendship (Jon if you are reading this, you had better agree, hopefully at this point you are nodding!!!).  I have just re-listened to that first interview and it wasnt too bad even if I do say so myself.  1 interview led to weekly interviews throughout the campaign and as the weeks passed I grew in confidence and the campaign was getting bigger by the day, there was always something new to bring each week, ranging from wheelbarrows to The Welsh Guards, yes I had the army involved.

Jon Andrews doing his interview with me

at Brookwood Club

Jon also did interviews at Brookwood Bakers/Post Office where he interviewed some of the staff, Mandi Parish/Penny Collyer and a few of the customers that were dropping off bags.  On a separate occasion Jon came to Brookwood Club for a swift coca cola as I recall, I managed to get a few people revved up to do interviews, including Lee Orriss the bar steward, Liam Brennan, Lou Bayliss Stubbington, Andy Gilday and a few others and a few people dropped off food parcels that night, so we collared them too, that made great interview material as well. You can catch all of the podcasts here:  Jon Andrews - Podbean

From left to right
Jon Andrews, Trudi Fletcher, Penny Collyer
Keri Riches, Mandi Parish and Shaun Roker

I think Jon found our last interview a little strange as a few of us went to Radio Woking including Jon to be interviewed by Zahir and Jackie on the final closure of the campaign for 2017.  So Jon became the interviewee instead of the interviewer and talked about his experience being involved in the campaign.  Again, what a great night and a great way to close the Christmas campaign, think you can tell from the pictures below we had a blast.  We even had cakes supplied by Brookwood Bakers/Post Office.

So what can I say about Radio Woking, they have been absolute troupers helping out, to all of you at Radio Woking, keep doing what you are doing you are doing a fantastic job by helping local people on a local radio spread the word around the community.

The We Love Woking presenters, Zahir & Jackie
with Lisa, Liam, Ellie and I

Jon, cant wait to get started again this year, you will not believe half of it I tell ya - until the first interview keep tuned on blogger.com

Christmas Foodbank Gang with Zahir & Jackie our last
interview for the year. 

The Trolley Cart - Christmas Foodbank Campaign

Christmas Foodbank Collection

Good news to all you local readers, my first article about the Foodbank for this year is in the village newsletter, so hopefully that will help get the word out, it is also a reminder to everyone just how well we did as a community coming together last year.  The Salvation Army (whom Woking Foodbank work with) were able to provide an additional 90 parcels to vulnerable families/individuals so that is a massive achievement, it just goes to prove by working together we can achieve great things...

Before the campaign really gets going I must say a massive thank you to everyone that gets involved, it is actually a lot of hard work, but I am fortunate enough to have some lovely family and friends in my life.

Brookwood Club and Brookwood Post Office/Bakers Dozen also play a massive role by taking in the food parcels during their working hours, this is a testament to great team work.  The staff are friendly and happy to help, or have I badgered them, I am not totally sure, but on this occasion I am going to go with the first option 😍

Jon Andrews at Radio Woking, based at Winston Churchill School, you picked up on my first tweet last year and asked for that 1 interview, who knew that I would have regular weekly slots - glad you are on-board again this year 😊  you can catch Jon on Wednesday morning's 7-9am http://www.radiowoking.co.uk/ or DAB......be sure to listen in once the Brookwood Campaign gets underway.

You may recall that last week, I mentioned that Homebase in Knaphill (some say Brookwood) https://www.homebase.co.uk/stores/south-east-england/woking very kindly donated a trolley cart for me, see piccie below.  Roger the store manager seems like a really nice person and I have to say that I was a little shocked when he agreed to donate the trolley to me.  You know what its like, bing I had an idea, I will email Homebase and see if they will donate a trolley for free, would it work? could I get it? is it cheeky to ask? and the answer is yes to all of the above, but the moral of the story is, if you don't ask you don't get....My surprise must have shown through when I collected the trolley bright and early Sunday morning.  Well you have to get in early don't you and I didn't want to give him the chance to change his mind!!!   This little trolley is going to be so handy, last year I had several issues; namely bags splitting on the way home with the tin cans rolling all around the village and me standing there like a complete donut not knowing what to do first, so I can remember three bags splitting and I have to say they were pretty darn heavy too, obviously not once they were empty ha ha ha....I was not far from home, but it seemed like miles (bit like when you have had far too much to drink and it seems to take forever to get home when you are walking!!!) anyway, three bags had split, I picked up as much as I could and ran home, well hopped home, for those that know me really well I have injured knees so running is defo out of the question.

I finally got home, threw as many cans as I was carrying over the front gate and ran (yes I know hopped) back for the rest of them.  Can you believe that normally at the end of the working day there are loads of people mulling around the village getting off the trains after a hard day's work, but on this night, not one single person came to my rescue!!!!

Three trips later all the food was safely indoors although a few cans slightly battered.  Funnily enough I did reflect on it and I couldn't stop laughing to myself, if anyone was watching me they probably wondered what on earth is she up to?

The next occasion was when Brookwood Pre-School messaged me to say that they have some parcels for me which the kiddies had very kindly donated.  Ah ha I thought great, I will go collect them before I go to work......this was easier said than done, I arrived at the pre-school to find two very large and lovely food parcels they had both been done up so lovely in boxes, with ribbons and everything.  So I got the piccies for social media and thanked the lovely ladies.  I picked up one of the boxes and thought oooo I am only down the road I can carry it, so off I started, well you know what's coming next, the box starts to get heavy, its getting heavier with every step, I can see the house, but ya know I had to put that parcel down three times before I got home it nearly killed me!!!.  So the second parcel was even bigger than the first, how on earth am I ever going to manage that???? yet another light bulb moment - I know I will take the wheelbarrow - well the ladies at the pre-school thought it was hilarious, but I can tell you it saved my poor old arms, my legs and my back.  Pretty chuffed with my efforts and it was only 8.30am - now to work!!!! 

The first piccie is as was donated from Homebase as I said above, but my very clever friend Phil Bayliss of PA Bayliss Carpentry has very kindly spent  his own time transforming it into what you see now - yes a sleigh (well come on, it is a Christmas Foodbank Collection!)  In my mind it looks absolutely amazing, I am so chuffed with it and Phil has done the most amazing job, let me know if he can help out with any carpentry work as you can see he is pretty darn good.  I am very lucky to live in a village where everyone pulls together to help out, its such a great warm feeling.

Amazingly transformed from Trolley to Sleigh by Phil
Bayliss of P.A Bayliss Carpentry (of Brookwood)

The Christmas Foodbank Posters

So my first Woking Foodbank Christmas Campaign blog was an instant success!!!  go me..... check out their website at https://woking.foodbank.org.uk/

This week, I would like to dedicate my blog to the very hard working Emma Cogger, she has worked tirelessly with the posters, I have sent Emma a rough idea of what I would like and sometimes within minutes, they are back looking all beautiful and pretty. Well it's now the 1st October, which means that the Brookwood Village Christmas Foodbank Campaign, (which it is now known as) kicks off in only 3 weeks time, so I guess I best get my butt into gear and get those all important posters up and sent off to the people that need them.  My article has been produced in the village newsletter so guess people will be stopping me in the village again, asking me - "are you the foodbank lady"? and the answer to that is -absolutely 😉  So for now you need to concentrate of the first poster CAN YOU HELP? hopefully this will be met with a massive yes.  As a community we can achieve great things...

So what's it all about, well hopefully the posters will say it all, but, I think we have all heard about the Foodbank at one time or another and in my eyes in this day and age it is so sad that people have to end up there, but I guess it could be any one of us at any time.....So the foodbank is not for regular users, but for people in crisis, you can be referred via various sources, such as, your GP, Social Services, Woking Borough Council, Citizens Advice  etc.  You are then provided with vouchers which you can spend in Woking Foodbank located in the High Street (for those that knew the old Courts Furniture place, its that building) at The Lighthouse, Sheerwater Hub or indeed The Salvation Army in Goldsworth Park and all food is marked down to a very cheap price.

Now my posters will help getting the word out there, which hopefully you will agree, Emma has very kindly prepared several for me this year, which are below.  Hopefully they will make good sense to you, but as the weeks go on through the campaign I will explain more in detail.  So this week's blog is going to be short....cos I want to make sure that I don't bore you all to death and you come back for more and more each week. 

Check out Emma's posters below, which will be going on display in several locations throughout Brookwood Village later this week in good time for the last week of October and also various companies....

As mentioned previously the Christmas campaign officially starts on the last week of October which is of course Halloween week, so if you happen to have any halloween treats leftover, be sure to put them into the food parcel for the foodbank, sweeties will be lovely for the little ones.

Yes, donated, I know, will let you know
 how that
 happened in next week's blog

These are all the local companies that
donated last year...