There are a number of excellent charities which work to alleviate, and campaign to end, food poverty. Mine, which in order to protect the identity of the real one I refer to as the fictitious footballing town of Melchester, happens to be part of the Trussell Trust. These are statistics for March 2025:
Does anything strike you as, perhaps, odd about these figures? I am very proud of the work we do but I am even more proud of the generous people who donate the food that makes it all possible. I mean, all I do is sit at the front of house, take orders from people who have no money and no food, make them a cuppa and generally show some solidarity, kindness and friendship. If no one donates any food, no amount of solidarity, kindness and friendship would feed empty stomachs. And here’s the thing: in March 2025, we distributed nearly four tons more food than the public donated.
We can do that on a short term basis because we have some reserves. In Melchester, we don’t accept fresh food because we have nowhere to keep it. Tinned and packaged foods may not be quite so healthy but they do ‘keep’ for a lot longer. You have probably worked out for yourself that such a situation is not sustainable in the medium term. But it’s not an unusual situation. In fact, it’s the norm.
I offer no criticism whatsoever for this, other than to successive governments, including this one, for allowing it to happen at all. It is little short of scandalous that we need food banks, but while we do need them, it’s important to be honest about the problems they are facing.
I am in awe of those who do collections for things like Christmas hampers and Easter Eggs. It is a sad by-product of poverty that those little ‘extras’ are unattainable to millions of people, especially children. Already, I have seen wonderful collections for Easter whereby numerous kids will now get treats where otherwise they wouldn’t. What concerns me a little is that a child cannot live by Easter eggs alone.
People are struggling at the moment. Bills and prices always seem to rise and for many people they struggle just to put bread on their own tables, never mind on anyone else’s. Nearly ten million people are struggling to afford or access food. I’m not good with even basic maths, but I make that around 17% of the entire population. Either way, whatever the correct number is, it is a huge number of people.
There was a part of me that actually got a bit pissed off when Easter Egg collections seemed to get more publicity than the more mundane stuff that we need, but that was pathetic of me. It was part of the tired old and widely held assumption that the poor should not enjoy any luxuries at all, that they should be content with gruel. And I fell for it. I doubt very much that the Christmas and Easter Egg collections make the slightest difference to our work. It’s quite possible they actually do more to publicise poverty in general. If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then everyone’s a winner.
I’m hoping that someday soon food poverty will be eliminated for good, that we will not be out there essentially begging the public to donate food or Easter Eggs and that our roles will be made redundant. And it will finally get through to the powers-that-be that in what it is still a very wealthy country, no one should be hungry. This is not the Victorian age, although many societal attitudes make it feel that way.
