Food Parcels Harvest Appeal 2023

Harvest is coming up and as always the church celebrates and gives thanks for all our blessings! We also collect for those in need, bringing donations to our Harvest Festival Service on the 8th October. If you would like to join in you can join us at 10:30am on the day, or donate any time beforehand. 

Here is the list of the weekly items that our local Ash Villages Food Parcels team use for a standard food parcel, to give you an idea of what you might donate: 

The tins we get through 30+ a week of each: 

Tomatoes / Sweetcorn / Baked beans / Tuna

Meat (curry or hotdogs or ham or mince or corned beef etc)

Sweet (tinned fruit / rice pudding / custard etc)

Other staples we include every week are: 

Pasta (instant noodles are a great ‘low cost to cook’ option) 

Rice (microwave rice is low cost to heat)

Pasta sauce (again low cost to heat)

Tea / coffee / sugar 

UHT milk & Cereal

Treats occasionally to bring a smile e.g. Biscuits / Jam / crisps / sweets 

We also try to include fresh items to support healthier eating: 

Potatoes / Onions / Carrots / Apples / Eggs

Any of the above that you might like to donate would be much appreciated thank you. You could pick one item and donate a few of the same, or pick a couple of things from the list, or even pick one of each and donate the necessary for a whole weekly parcel. 

Alternatively you could choose to support us with toiletries and “Baby bank” items:

Shower gel / Shampoo / Sanitary items / Soap

Nappies / baby wipes / Baby formula / Baby food pouches

Laundry pods (we divide packs between families)

Supporting those with much loved Pets: We also like to be able to give out cat food and dog food if people are able to donate those, so that families can afford to keep much loved pets. 

Where to send things:

Donations for the Harvest Festival service collection can be dropped off at St Mary’s Church on Vale Rd, GU12 5JE whenever we are open. (E.G Sunday church services are 10:30am-12:00 / Toddlers on Tuesdays 10:00-11:30 / Cafe on Fridays 10:00-13:00) 

Throughout the year you can also take donations directly to the team at the Chapel on Wharf Rd GU12 5AY, where we pack the parcels. The team is there packing parcels on Wednesdays and Fridays 8:45-9:30am or contact us to make other arrangements if these times don’t work for you. You can also choose to leave items in the community shed in the Chapel car park. Please clearly label the bag “Donation for the food parcels”. 

Do you take donations of funds too? Yes please! 

If shopping is inconvenient we do also very gladly accept donations of funds. We can buy in bulk which keeps the cost down and makes your money go even further to feed more families.

You can donate by cash or cheque at St Mary’s church Ash Vale, which our Treasurer allocates to the restricted fund for food parcels – just write on the envelope or on the back of the cheque what the donation is for and he ensures it goes in the right account.

We can send you the details for a bank transfer or regular standing order if you prefer.  This just requires you to put “Food Parcels” as the reference so again we can assign the funds to the right project.

For immediate online donations we have a church account with the “Give a little” donations platform and the link for the Food Parcels project is here: https://givealittle.co/campaigns/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c  this platform allows you to sign up for monthly regular giving, or a one-off donation, whichever you would like to do.

Whatever you decide to do – thank you very much for your support!

If you’d like to know more please contact: 07730609446

Egg boxes!

Would you like to be more eco-friendly and help out the local Ash Villages Food Parcels Project at the same time? We urgently need your egg boxes please – the small ones that hold 6 eggs – for us to use with the food parcels. We buy our eggs in bulk to keep the cost down, as funding is VERY tight, but we can only do it if we have enough egg boxes to put them in. So please donate your SMALL egg boxes to us and we will use them again! You can drop them off in the community shed in the chapel car park any time 24/7 and we will be very grateful! Thank you!!

with much love to all our neighbours from the Ash Villages Food Parcels Team

Welcome to the Autumn Term

Good Morning! Our regular groups are open again this week for the winter term. We look forward to welcoming you to St Mary’s and to The Chapel.

Mondays – Chapel Cafe 9:00-12:00 (Chapel)

Tuesdays – Little Lambs (babies and toddlers) at st Mary’s 10:00-11:30

Wednesdays – Chapel Kids (babies and toddlers) 11:00-14:00 (bring a packed lunch or we offer baked beans on toast)

Fridays – St Mary’s Community Cafe 10:00-13:00 (toasties at 12:00)

Chapel: Wharf road GU12 5AY
St Mary’s: Vale Road GU12 5JE

90+ year olds with MP3s continued……

As a recap, back in May 2023 Catto Homecare provided five lucky clients with free MP3 players. We were all aware of the powerful footage of the famous ballerina when she listened to Swan Lake https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=959726784551737. However, we do not wish to digress.

Our most successful experience was provided by our highly energetic staff member who has an extraordinarily high level of enthusiasm with anything she undertakes. The initial MP3 player was gifted to one of our clients who we are going to call Maria (for the purposes of this blog) and it took a while to persuade her that it was a genuinely free item that she could listen to. Maria belongs to the age group where her belief is ‘nothing comes for free’. Maria is in her late 90’s, partially sighted and lives on her own with Alzheimer’s. Our care staff were given instructions starting with helping the client to put the old fashioned headphones on (similar to a hair band). Although we are not allowed to share the photo of Maria smiling on her chair listening to jazz in a world of her own, we can only describe her beaming smile when she wears her headphones and enthusiastic head nods to the music as heart-warming. Our initial blog covered the fact that her music choice was ‘any jazz is good jazz’. Maria simply accepted that this tiny bright pink device could magically play music loud enough for her to hear. Maria has recently had her chair increased in height to enable her to get on and off more easily and she sat with her headphones on and music at full volume sweetly shouting out with a big smile ‘I feel like a queen now’. All the staff feel quite guilty when we remove the headphones from our clients. We ensure they go into their lockable boxes and are turned off until the next special music therapy session.

The moral of the story is that we continue to receive just as much pleasure from the reaction of our clients during the music therapy sessions.

We are currently hiring staff so please feel free to get in touch for a cup of tea or coffee in our igloo for a chat about the roles we have.

If the readers are managers of a care home or domiciliary company like us, you can obtain five MP3 players from Norman McNamara from Purple Angel Dementia Awareness Devon, Charity Number 1189616,  National  Westminster bank Torquay Sort code 55 70 01, Account number 74884662. Catto Homecare provided a donation. 

Written by Wendy from the domiciliary and live in care provider Catto Homecare in Mytchettwww.cattohomecare.co.uk

SPARKS funding for Ash Villages Food Parcels Project

Just like so many other charities, churches and community projects, the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project is suffering from a reduction in donations of food, toiletries and funds as everyone adjusts their budgets to get through the cost of living crisis. We are doing all we can to keep costs very tightly controlled and have been more public about asking for help on social media recently. However, funding is very tight and we are in need of more help to keep the service going for as long as it is needed.

Today we are delighted to share some good news – the SPARKS fund has awarded us enough funds to fill our food parcels for 5 weeks! The SPARKS fund is part of Voluntary Action South West Surrey, helping communities impacted by covid19 and its wider impact on health and wellbeing. This is a very welcome grant indeed, and will make a huge difference to the local people we support in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham. Every parcel is a response to help a person or family in crisis, and every penny of this grant will be providing food and essential toiletries to those in need in the coming weeks.

We hope that all our friends and neighbours in the local area will keep the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project in your thoughts and prayers as we head towards autumn and winter. Please do get in touch if you would like to volunteer, donate or collect tins at your school / company / club / church / shop / and please keep us in mind especially as Harvest Festival approaches. We would be very grateful for any contributions of store cupboard foods, essential toiletries or indeed funds which we use to buy supplies in bulk. We also accept donations online via Give a Little here:

https://givealittle.co/campaigns/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c

Thank you for your support and wishing you a wonderful summer,

Alex & Carla

#AshVillagesFoodParcelsProject #FoodBank #AshVale #AshGreen #Tongham #Ash #Community

Contact us about the project: 07730 609446 / foodparcels@ash-vale.org.uk

Meet the local – The Parishioner interviews Katie

(Parishioner) – great to meet you tell us a bit about yourself!

Hi I’m Katie, mum of 2 (plus 1 fur baby!). I like keeping busy and my passions include designing and decorating rooms in our family home.

(Parishioner) – How long have you been in the area, tell us what you love about Ash & Ash Vale?

I’ve been blessed to be a local all my life, and I really love the sense of community. As a youngster I went to Walsh Infants and Juniors, and then Ash Manor, so I’m Ash through and through! I love the local community and especially the groups at The Chapel on Wharf Rd where I have spent many happy hours with the kids.

(Parishioner) What’s good in the holidays around here – Anything you’d recommend to a newcomer in the area?

Our favourite thing to do is “Picnic and Play” at The Chapel on Wednesdays in August. We love all the activities and games – and Neil’s pancakes of course! We’ve been to Forest Kids Ash, which is great fun too. I would recommend both of those to anyone.

(Parishioner) – a little bird told us you have a cleaning business? Tell us more about it!

Yes, I’m self employed, serving the local community doing cleaning for local people walkable from Shawfield School area. I’m very passionate about my cleaning, and have a good eye for detail. It’s what I love to do!

(Parishioner) – Great to meet you Katie, thanks for being our “Meet the Local” this week!

If you’d like to contact Katie to enquire about a clean you can reach her on: littlegem.ks@gmail.com

Ash Vale Community Singers re-starting 6th September

By Andy Johnson

ASH VALE VILLAGE SINGERS

Your local community choir re-starts

Wednesday 6th September 2023

shanties – spirituals – rounds – folk songs – work songs – evergreen pop songs – drinking songs – African harmony songs – carols and more

NO AUDITIONS

NO READING

NO ‘HOMEWORK’

just singing

by listening and repeating

7.45 to 9.30 pm in the small hall

St Mary’s Community Centre, 203 Vale Rd, GU12 5JE

Weekly on Wednesdays in Surrey school term times

Give it a go!

More info Andy 01252 645090