Amey is supporting foodbank charity The Trussell Trust as its UK-wide foodbank network goes about providing food parcels to people in need this Christmas.
With 13 million people currently living below the poverty line in the UK, people face hunger every day for a variety of reasons. The Trussell Trust’s network of over 420- foodbanks provides a minimum of three days’ emergency food and support to people unable to afford food after being hit by something unavoidable, such as redundancy, illness or an unexpected bill, while also offering advice to help people build resilience. Last year, over 1.1 million food supplies were handed out by The Trussell Trust to families in need.
Recognising the great value of the work undertaken by The Trussell Trust, Amey has lent its support to the organisation through a donation that will provide support to several foodbanks both at Christmas and throughout the year and through many hours of voluntary work by Amey employees: so far, over 60 Amey employees have volunteered, giving over 450 hours of support at locations across the country, including Birmingham, Liverpool, Bicester and Kingston-upon-Thames. This supports Amey’s wider initiative to support communities by offering employees paid volunteering days: this year alone over 2000 days have been dedicated to employee volunteering.
Laura Earp, an Amey Volunteer at the Bicester foodbank, said: “I was really impressed with the work that The Trussell Trust does and amazed by the generosity of the public. Some people donated full trolley loads of shopping and a few even mentioned that they were donating food rather than buying Christmas presents this year which is extremely heart-warming. The public clearly want to help, and it was great that I could use my Community Involvement Day to support this fantastic charity.”
Amey’s Group HR and Communications Director, Ian Deninson, said: “We are delighted to be able to support The Trussell Trust, an organisation that carries out some crucial work for people at a difficult period in their life. I am very proud of the fact that so many of our employees have given their time to help out collecting and distributing food this December. We hope that our donation will also go a long way to helping many more people in the coming months.”
David McAuley, CEO at The Trussell Trust said: “We are extremely grateful to Amey for their generous support to The Trussell Trust, both in terms of their financial donation and for their 60 days of volunteering support to our foodbanks during the lead up to Christmas, a particularly busy time of year for our network as foodbanks work to support people who would otherwise go hungry at Christmas. The financial donation from Amey will not only be used to pay for support of five of our foodbanks for twelve months but will also go towards rolling out Eat Well Spend Less, our budget cookery course, to several foodbanks over the coming months”.