Norwich Foodbank: Update 228, 18 July 2025
Good morning everyone! I read an interesting piece recently, I’m sharing here: ‘I’ve been thinking about the feelings we often try to push away: sadness, anger, loneliness, boredom. Most of us treat them like unwanted guests. But what if they’re not just here to unsettle us? What if they’re messengers? Take lobsters. When their shells get too tight, they don’t push through the discomfort. They retreat. Find a safe place. Shed what no longer fits. And only then, they grow. Over and over again. We see it every week, in our work and personal lives, with groups and organisations we walk alongside. Growth so often begins in the discomfort. Maybe what we’re trying to say is… be more lobster ‘
Penultimate call for help:
Thank you to those who have signed up to help us at the upcoming NORJAM event. We will be at the Norfolk Showground all day on Thursday and Friday 14th / 15th August with activities for the young people attending as well as awareness raising for donations and ongoing support from local groups. If you can help (and haven’t already told us): NORJAM sign up
Norfolk Future Survey:
In case you haven’t seen it, there is a ‘Future Norfolk survey’ that is being done to feed into what council provision will look like in the future. It is open to the public so we’ll respond from a foodbank / charity view but if you would like to respond in a personal way (with or without your foodbank experience) please do so here: https://www.futurenorfolk.co.uk/
South Norfolk Awards:
Big well done to Waveney foodbank for winning ‘community organisation of the year’ award, nominated by the public, in the South Norfolk 2025 awards!  You can read more here: facebook link
Last call for help:
Thank you to those who have signed up to help us at the upcoming Yoga event. We’ll be at Whitlingham as the only charity, with news and activities relating to our work all day on Saturday 2nd August. Help would be appreciated and so do please sign up if you can: Yoga sign up
Asda News:
Thank you to everyone involved at the recent Asda collection – we raised just over £250 in financial gifts and collected just over 250kg in donations! This amount was even more appreciated because the store was, at times, very quiet but this did mean some great conversations with customers were able to happen. Two that particularly stood out were: ‘one person who had been previously homeless and engaging with the foodbank ‘helped them turn their life around.’ And another: ‘A customer said we had helped him when he was homeless and he wanted to donate a few meals so went around the store and created these. He said he knew how hard it is even with welfare support especially for single people. He wanted to thank everyone for their time / energy.’
Caption Competition:
A separate thank you to Mary for literally filling her car with eggs from Asda who donated a pallet load! [insert caption here, but not eggs-cellent or eggs-citing please… Entries welcome!]
Welcome Aisla:
A warm welcome to our foodbank team to Aisla (see attached photo), who has recently joined our Partners as a new Citizen’s Advice advisor. Aisla will be part-time with us and continuing part-time in other roles within Norfolk Citizen’s Advice. Some of you may have met while Aisla whilst shadowing Alex and Miranda and others will be meeting over the next few weeks as we firm up the timetable of who will be where – please do refer to the ‘Partners Calendar’ on the centre tablets to stay up to date with who to expect which week. And if you don’t know where or what this is (!) please do ask Jon, Rachel or myself and we’ll be happy to share / update.
Downham Market:
Jon and I visited Downham Market this week, as our summer Norfolk foodbank cluster meeting takes turns at different foodbanks (it was hosted by us for years and is now on a bit of a tour of Norfolk!). I always find it interesting to see other venues and notice similarities (lots of baked beans, pasta and smiling volunteers!) and differences. This foodbank is in one venue, open twice a week with two part-time Citizens Advice workers on site to triage and advise. Their warehouse is over the road in a slightly smaller version of ours (i.e. purpose-built warehouse). One main difference is that they have all their items loose at the distribution centre (see attached photos), ready to make into a parcel when someone arrives, the warehouse team process donations but don’t make up boxes.
I have offered this before, but making sure to do so again as we have new people or you may have missed it on a previous newsletter – if you would like to visit a different area of the foodbank to understand how it operates and how your role fits in, please do speak to any of the staff team (Jon, Katherine, Keith, Rachel or myself) and we will be very happy to arrange this. We have an office, warehouse, 11 distribution centres, transport team, supermarket / event collection teams so any of these areas are open to a visit but please arrange with us in advance.
As always, thank you for what you do and we wish you all a happy Friday and weekend when it comes.
Hannah