LAUNCESTON Foodbank Charity Shop are appealing for volunteers ahead of the summer holidays.

The charity shop, which is situated in Newport Industrial Estate, helps fund the actual foodbank itself, which gives out hundreds of items of food each week to the local community.

Launceston Foodbank project manager, Yvonne King, says: “We need volunteers for the charity shop which is open from Monday to Friday, 10am-2.30pm and on Saturdays from 10am-1pm.

“We have a shop manager and an assistant that are salaried, but besides that we rely on volunteers.

“It’s an exceptionally busy shop and during the summer holidays especially, we need some help. “People go on holiday and some of our volunteers with younger children can’t come in. Whether it’s for a couple hours or a whole shift, that’d be great.”

So what are the requirements to work in the shop?

Yvonne said: “You need to be really physically fit as it’s very hard work. You could be stacking or moving stuff, could be on the till, pricing up or sorting the donations which are by the stackload. They are then brought back downstairs to go on the shelves, so there’s stairs involved as well.

“All the money that we raise in the charity shop goes towards the foodbank. We don’t receive any government or council funding, so we are totally self funding.

“If we didn’t have the charity shop, we wouldn’t be able to open the foodbank for the amount of hours we do.

“It’s unusual for a foodbank to be open five days a week, normally it’s a couple, but because of the money raised in the charity shop, we can keep it open for longer.”

Yvonne admits that with the summer holidays, Launceston Foodbank will be stretched.

She said: “We’re getting busier and busier by the week, the last few weeks have been ridiculously busy.

“During the summer we work with all the primary schools. All of the children who are normally on free school meals, we provide them with food like they would get at school.

“We make up food bags and the children and their parents come down with their voucher and have a bag of food which are to replace the breakfast and lunch they’d have at school.

“A bag lasts approximately for a week. A child can use the voucher three times throughout the holidays and how they use that is up to them.

“The vouchers are for children aged five to 16 and we work with Launceston College as well.

“About 150 have gone out to schools and we’ll probably feed approximately 300 children this summer.

“We’re always trying to educate people about the foodbank.”

Yvonne was also keen to dispel a couple of rumours.

She said: “It’s not always people on benefits, a lot of people are working, but because they are on such a low income, they need to come down.

“Another myth is that it’s people who can’t cook, but if they haven’t got the food how would they be able to cook. We’ll help anyone who is in a crisis.”

For anyone wanting to donate some food to the Launceston Foodbank, Yvonne said: “If anybody wants to donate our main collection point is at Tesco.

“There’s always a list there to see what we’re short of.”

If you would like to get involved as a volunteer at Launceston Foodbank or Launceston Foodbank Charity Shop, call 01566 779550 or search ‘Launceston Foodbank Charity Shop’ on Facebook.