New foodbank opens in Rawdon

The emergency food distribution centre is one way Trinity Church is living out its mission to share God's love, explains Pete Lambert

For the past year or so, we have been using a new logo and strap-line at Trinity Church: Sharing God’s Love!

As we move into a New Year and make new commitments, identify projects and attempt to realise our dreams, what better mission could there be than to help the needy of our own community? For we believe that even in the apparently affluent area in which we live, there are those who, often through little fault of their own, get into difficulty and enter a downward spiral, a vortex from which there seems to be little or no way of escape.

Yet there is hope! Trinity Foodbank Centre (Trinity FBC) opened its doors on Monday 16 January, and help will be available in the form of emergency food parcels each Monday after that from 11.00am-1.30pm. Our willing team of volunteers will help those who come to see us identify their own paths towards a better future, through signposting them to the many organisations which already exist with this purpose as their prime objective.

Trinity FBC will operate as a satellite of Bradford North Foodbank, even though Trinity FBC’s main area of service will be the LS19 postcode area. The logistics and geography are such that it makes perfect sense to do it this way. Bradford North Foodbank is part of the Trussell Trust, whose aim is to end food poverty in the UK. That is some challenge! Working with Bradford North Foodbank, under the aegis of the Trussell Trust, means that we follow strict guidelines in all aspects of our operation.

If the response we have received from prospective volunteers is anything to go by, there is a massive will among our local community to help others: we trained 17 people on Monday 9 January and at least twice as many more have expressed interest in doing the same. Well done Rawdon!

We are on a mission and our mission is nothing more and nothing less than to share God’s love!

Bring it on!
 

Pete Lambert is the secretary at Trinity Church, Rawdon, West Yorkshire