Hello Everyone!

We are in desperate need of a van. Transportation has always been an issue for us and we rely totally on our volunteers offering their own vehicles to collect and distribute food. We hate having to ask for financial support as we pride ourselves on keeping the cafe financially independent and sustainable. However, needs must - please, please read our story and if by the end you could donate a pound or two, we’d be so grateful.

Unfathomably, surplus food from supermarkets has increased during lockdown and we are collecting an increased tonnage each week. It is more often than not taking more trips than usual to collect the food on offer each evening. We do around 30 pick ups per week.

We have increased our food donation collections as we’ve seen the explosion of need at the Letchworth Foodbank and Chestnut Tree and Oughton Family Centres. The need at the Foodbank has doubled and referrals to the Family Centres has tripled. We deliver food to these places on Tuesdays and Fridays.

We also deliver food to the Wilbury Community Cafe several times a week and Kings Community Church on Jackmans on Tuesdays. These organisations are gathering the people that need extra and are offering them support.

We are using our cars even more so in the current outbreak as we are not only doing our own home deliveries to our cafe customers in need, to those that are isolated, vulnerable and elderly and to individuals that use the Foodbank but we are also distributing food to areas of social housing in and around Letchworth.

We’ve managed to recruit people on the Grange, Ridge Road, Rushby Walk, Campsfield Way in Letchworth and Chaucer Way in Hitchin to give out food to their neighbours. We’ve targeted areas of need that have a green open space in order that everyone can practise safe social distancing. These areas get food drops several times a week and neighbourly social media networks are alerting people to its arrival.

I do the bulk of these deliveries and am driving to and from my house several times a day to pick up food and then get it out into Letchworth. With a van, I could do one round trip.

We are also travelling up to Milton Keynes each week to access food surplus from the FareShare warehouse there. I come home with the car full and trays stacked up high on my front passenger seat. We could take so much more if we had a van.

We are obviously not charging for anything we do. Now that the cafe is closed we are not getting regular donations from our customers and so our ability to be financially sustainable has stalled. We can’t see the lovely, bubbly caf reopening as it was - social distancing will prevent this. We are hesitant to ask for cash donations in our usual donation buckets. Things have got to change. The way we are getting food out into the community at the moment is the way it‘s going to be for the foreseeable so please, if you think what we do is valuable for our community help us raise some money to enable us to continue our work.