A community cohesion charity in Haringey has been supporting its local community by providing food to up to 600 families per week thanks to help from their local Tesco store, FareShare and the community.
Throughout the pandemic, the Selby Trust has operated a Food Hub to provide food to locals through donations from local Tesco stores, and has provided a staggering 20,000 food parcels per month on average.
As part of its Food Hub, the Selby Trust receives food parcels containing a variety of food products provided through Tesco’s Community Food Connection scheme, which is run in partnership with food redistribution charity FareShare.
Driven by a desire to support vulnerable people in the area, the Food Hub runs from the charities base, the Selby Centre on Selby Road in Tottenham where it distributes food twice weekly on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Set up in 1992, The Selby Trust manages community facilities such as the Selby Centre which brings together a mix of individuals and organisations, primarily from BME, refugee and other excluded communities in Tottenham, Haringey, North London and beyond.
Moussa Amine Sylla Community Organiser said: “The last 20 months have been incredibly difficult for everyone, and I think as a community we’ve learnt the importance of pulling together through adversity.
“We’ve been actively supporting the community now for 19 years, so when the pandemic struck – we knew we had to offer our support in whatever way we could, and the social infrastructure that we built throughout the work of community organising has been essential in doing so.
“Our Food Hub has been incredibly successful, and we feel privileged to have been able to provide such a vital service to people throughout the pandemic.
“We’re hugely grateful to Tesco for all of the food donations that made it possible, and we hope to continue the foodbank long into the future.”
Tesco Community Food Connection links stores to local charities and community groups to ensure that no good food goes to waste.
Claire De Silva, Head of Communities at Tesco, said: “We know that the Community Food Connection scheme is making a real difference to groups like The Selby Trust by providing a little bit of extra help in the shape of surplus food from our stores.
“This is the biggest supermarket food redistribution scheme in the UK, and we know there are more groups that could receive food for the work they carry out, so I would encourage any group that thinks it could benefit to contact FareShare, so we can help even more good causes.”
Lindsay Boswell, Chief Executive at FareShare, said: “We are incredibly thankful to Tesco for its continued support of FareShare. We work with a number of charities and community groups providing essential support to their local communities, and receiving a steady stream of food helps them to feed those who need it most.”
