Did somebody say Harvest? Look at this wonderful display! Congratulations to all involved at Normandy Village School with your Harvest decorations and foodbank collection. What a beautiful array of art work and brilliant donations for the local food parcels proect.
The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project would like to say a HUGE HARVEST THANK YOU to all the staff, students, parents and carers at Normandy Village School for this fantastic assembly of boxes, packets, jars and tins which will all go to local families in need in the local villages.
Your choice of items shows great care and thoughtfulness, as well as huge generosity. We received your gifts today and will be sending them out to families next week in their food parcels, to put food on their tables and smiles on their faces. Thank you from our team and from all the families whom this will feed.
A huge HARVEST THANK YOU to all at St Mary’s Ash Vale, for the wonderful foodbank donations from the Harvest Festival on Sunday.
We collected your gifts on Tuesday and they went out in the food parcels today, with some items left for the parcels on Friday. The Wednesday team fed 22 families with your generous donations today, some large families, some single people in need, food for 61 people in total. And more parcels will go out on Friday to other families too.
Thank you for your support! #AshVillagesFoodParcelsProject
Our web page has more info here: https://ash-vale.org.uk/foodparcels-2/
What a blessing this morning! The Ash Villages Food Parcels Team were delighted to receive Harvest donations today from Northcamp Methodist church. A lovely array of items, from tins to produce, and all just right for the food parcels that will be going out on Wednesday and Friday this week to local people in need.
Revd Anne personally delivered the donations to The Chapel, our wonderful local ecumenical project, jointly run by St Mary’s Church Ash Vale and the BlackwaterValley Methodist Circuit. The Chapel kindly hosts the Foodbank all year round, and allows us the space for our shelves, fridges and packing parcels. It is a huge blessing to people in urgent need locally in the villages of Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham.
Image – Foodbank Team, and Monday Chapel Cafe members, receiving donations for the foodbank from Northcamp Methodist Church, special delivery by Revd Anne.
If you would like to read all about the foodbank… here is our page: https://ash-vale.org.uk/foodparcels-2/ We have been running for over 5 years now, and what started as the local covid support group now runs as a full-blown foodbank in partnership with Ash Villages Support Circle. There are lots of stories on our page, and details of how you can donate, or ask for a referral.
The Chapel Project is here to share Christ’s love with people of all faiths and none through Hospitality, Creativity and Worship. We are home to Monday Chapel Cafe (warm Welcome space), NWCLF church on Sundays, ChapelKids on Wednesdays, as well as the Foodbank mentioned above, also Musicians in Residence Matt and Dan Weeks, Artists in Residence Debi and Jono Retallick, plus seasonal events Picnic and Play, Light Party, Christmas Fair, and of course hall users from the local community. If you want to know more about The Chapel Project please contact Revd Neil Lambert, Revd Anne Day or our Project Manager Alex: projectmanager@ash-vale.org.uk or visit http://www.ashvalechapel.com
Harvest Festival is a wonderful service where we give thanks to God for all our blessings, the wonderful world He created, and the amazing crops harvested at this time of year. Please join us on Sunday 28th September 10:30am and see what it’s all about! All are welcome, whether you’re a regular or a first time church go-er!
One of the things we do to celebrate and give thanks, is to bring donations of food and produce. This year we are once again donating to the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project (local foodbank for Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham), which we run in partnership with the Ash Villages Support Circle and the Chapel Project. Whether you come to our service or not, you can donate for this wonderful cause! We have a box for donations in the foyer, or you can bring donations to the service, or donate funds online using our Give a Little link. https://givealittle.co/c/3ijYS6zC4gbOGqwer2tmdY
What food to donate? Anything in a tin is great, and can be used in the food parcels right away. We use 30-50 tins a week each of things like tomatoes, baked beans, sweetcorn, lentils, tuna, hotdogs, meatballs, chicken curry, soup, rice pudding, fruit, custard, carrots, peas etc. We can also use anything else that has a long shelf life so pasta, rice, cereal, tea, coffee, UHT milk, pasta sauce, even crisps and sweets as a special harvest treat will be appreciated by families. Fresh produce – fruit and veg – is great too, and will go out in the very next round of food parcels (we send parcels out on Wednesdays and Fridays every week.) Or perhaps you might like to put together some “meal packs” pasta and sauce, curry and rice, tinned fruit and custard, noodles and sauce, hotdogs and baked beans – What’s your go-to storecupboard meal? Local families will really appreciate the thought that goes in to these.
What is most needed? If you would like to see the “live list” of what we most urgently need, we are also on the App called “Bank the Food” and we update this every couple of weeks to let our supporters know what we are most short of. https://www.bankthefood.com/ If you download the app, we should be easy to find (Ash Villages Food Parcels Project).
Before you go! We are decorating the church for Harvest Festival on Saturday 27th September. Would you like to donate flowers and produce for the display? Steph and the team would love to welcome you to come and help make the church look beautiful for Harvest Festival.
And finally – don’t forget Macmillan! Our coffee morning is this Friday 26th Sept 2025 10am-1pm, all welcome! Pop in for a quick cuppa and cake, buy Sue’s delicious array of jams and treats to take away, have a flutter on the raffle, or why not stay all morning and catch up with friends old and new over a slice of cake or stay for a cheese toastie or soup lunch.
Did you come to our Summer Fair on the 6th September? It was great wasnt it! We hope you had as much fun as we did. Thank you to Martin who organised everything, and to all of you who donated, helped, and came to support us on the day. We loved catching up with our lovely communtiy over refreshments, food, stalls and games.
We are delighted to share that the fundraising was a success too! Over £650 was raised overall, with £160 going to the foodbank (Ash Villages Food Parcels Project), and the rest is going towards the cost of our new boiler at St Mary’s, a vital project so we can keep the church and halls open for the whole community every day of the week.
We were also happy to have a Childrens Society stall and a Macmillan stall, and the funds raised on those will go directly to those charities. What a super day, and every penny raised will make a big difference.
Thank you everyone for your support and see you again soon!
PS – As at 10th September we still need to raise another £1,200 to cover the boiler replacement costs. If anyone has not yet donated and would like to do so, or if you can spare a little extra, here is the link for the boiler project. thank you so much!
As Harvest approaches, please consider a donation to the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project to help us support families in need this winter. Can you manage a monthly donation? Regular giving helps us to plan ahead and gives us peace of mind that we can meet the needs of anyone who is struggling in our local community.
You can also choose to donate tins and packets of food here at St Mary’s. We have a donations box in the foyer by St Francis. Thank you to everyone who donates in this way too!
Here’s the latest update from our project manager, to clarify school holiday arrangements just in case you need us this summer:
Delivery Service: Operating as usual, Wednesdays and Fridays, pre-booked, by referral from the usual agencies / churches, or existing clients can request a repeat. The cut off time is 5pm the night before as usual.
Collection service is limited to Fridays only, at 9:30am sharp, by prior arrangement, and the cut-off for referrals / repeats is by the usual time of 5pm on Thursdays. There are no Wednesday collections available in the school holidays.
No walk-in service available in the school holidays. All referrals / repeats are required pre-book for a delivery or collection.
Big thank you to our amazing volunteers! Please keep our wonderful team of volunteers in your thoughts and prayers as they work very hard to keep the foodbank running all year round.
Donations are always welcomed, and can be dropped off at St Mary’s or The Chapel whenever we are open. Please use the ‘Bank the food’ App to see what we need most urgently, or you can donate the usual tins, uht milk, pasta, rice etc as we use those every week to help local families in need.
The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project Team would like to say a huge thank you to everyone at Holly Lodge, and your teachers, parents and carers, for the wonderful fundraising you have done this summer. We are so grateful for the £165.16p you have given us, to top up our foodank stores. This will be a big blessing to people in need in our community.
Alex our Project Manager was delighted to visit your school to collect the funds. It was very inspiring to hear about all your wonderful achievements and awards in assembley, what a talented and lovely group of students. You have a lot to celebrate!
it’s time for our regular reminder about food safety and the Community Fridge. Please make sure you have a read! Thank you.
Reminder about dates and safety:
USE BY is a legal safety date. We cannot accept any items that have passed this date. Any item past its use by date must be composted or binned. It is not considered fit for human consumption.
BEST BEFORE is a food quality guideline. We can accept items that are a little past this date as long as the packaging is unopened and clearly labelled.
Allergens and Natasha’s Law: As a result of a rule called Natasha’s Law every packaged food item coming into our community fridge must list all its ingredients on its packaging with any of the 14 major allergens it contains in bold. In order to run the community fridge safely we must only accept food items that are clearly labelled and packaged by the food business or retailer. That includes individual bakery items too. So, if it’s not packaged, or not labelled, we can’t accept it. (Fresh, whole, uncut fruit and veg are ok)
All of us are responsible for health and safety. That includes you too! Our volunteers check the fridges every time they are here. Donors please check dates and labels before you put items in the fridge. Recipients please also check dates and labels when you collect food. If you spot a problem, please let us know so we can put it right asap. Let’s all work together to keep our Community Fridge safe. Thank you.
#AshValeCommunityFridge is open to all, located in the Community Shed at The Chapel on Wharf Rd, GU12 5AY
Please celebrate with us! Our foodbank team are overjoyed today, because the Ash Villages Food Parcels Team has received news that The National Lottery Community Fund will be supporting us this year! Our recent application has just been approved. Pop over and give the National Lottery Community Fund a like on facebook please to show our appreciation, hurrah! Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/TNLCommunityFund
This means a lot. In all seriousness, this funding will help the foodbank to thrive, so we can keep going and keep supporting eveyone who needs us in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham for many months to come. It also means that donations by local people can make an even bigger difference – every tin you send us is a tin we don’t have to use funding for, so the grant can stretch even further and feed even more families for longer. Our hard working and dedicated volunteers are amazing. They tirelessly pack and deliver parcels, clean fridges, collect and sort donations, take referrals and respond to emergencies, check the stock and tidy the shelves, they are super stars! And it is thanks to your generous giving and this National Lottery Community Funding that the shelves are full and we can be here, ready to help. Thank you!
Are you in need? No-one in our community ever needs to go to bed hungry, just contact CAB, social services, DWP, local churches, school or other agencies and you can be referred to us.
