Our team volunteered at Fareshare in Barnsley
Our team volunteered at Fareshare
At Hickton Quality Control, we prioritise supporting and caring for our community. Recently, our Bid Administrator, Sophie Tranter, and HR Administrator, Kirsty Ward, dedicated a day to volunteering at FareShare Yorkshire’s local center in Barnsley. FareShare is an organisation committed to redistributing surplus food to those in need, effectively tackling food waste and addressing hunger across the UK.
FareShare has redistributed 54,000 tonnes of food, serving 8,500 local charities and over one million people. They’ve also helped prevent 2 tonnes of CO2 from being wasted for every tonne of surplus food redistributed.
Our team visited the FareShare Yorkshire centre in Barnsley, which was founded in 1998 to support vital frontline organisations with surplus food. The centre currently supports almost 400 charities within the area.
These centres are volunteer-driven, and nothing would be possible without their dedication, whether volunteers are delivering surplus food to Community Food Members (CFMs) or picking and packing food, these award-winning volunteers are the heart of the entire operation.
Sophie shares how her day of volunteering went: “When we arrived at FareShare’s warehouse in Wombwell, we were surprised at just how big the unit was and how many vehicles they had available to transport food across the UK.
Once we’d attached our foot protectors and popped on our hi-vis jackets, we headed onto the warehouse floor where forklifts whizzed around and people moved huge crates of donations. We started off the by organising the crates, moving the produce onto FareShare’s own trolleys, and moving them into the chillers. Then we began to pack the orders for the following day so that in the morning, the vans could be loaded and head straight out to make deliveries to food banks, local churches and community halls.
Packing the vast number of orders made me realise just how many people must rely on this charity and it saddened me to think that without brilliant charities like FareShare, millions more people in the UK would go without the basics that so many of us take for granted. In this day and age, it’s crazy to think that we still need charities like this. Unfortunately, they are very much crucial for many peoples’ day-to day lives. We all felt incredibly proud to have helped this amazing charity and are looking forward to working with them again very soon.”
Kirsty shares her thoughts about the experience, “I loved my day at FareShare. What a great group of guys, so helpful, who gave great instruction but had fun along the way! There were 2 or 3 employed staff and the rest were volunteers which highlights just how important volunteers are to the charity. The hub in Wombwell is one of 37 across the UK!
We spent the first couple of hours unloading food items such as bread and sacks of potatoes from the boxes/crates they were sent in into FareShare’s own crates ready for picking and packing later on. This has to be done as some of the providers do not allow their own to be used, making the volunteers’ jobs
longer and harder.
In the afternoon we prepared large orders for smaller non-profit organisations such as local food banks or community centres that provide free meals for people who may be struggling financially or for the
elderly who attend for the company as well as the food.
We worked in the warehouse and then in large chillers selecting from a preprepared shopping list, putting them into crates and then onto a trolley ready to be loaded onto the vans the next morning ready for distribution. We prepared around 30 large orders.
I really felt a part of something special although a little sad that this sort of charity is needed on such a huge scale in 2024. I would do it again in a heartbeat!”
