Foodbank: A very big Thank You for 2025!

We have just finished adding up all the foodbank data for 2025 for our project reporting, and thought we should let you all know what an amazing community you all are! Huge thanks to everyone who has donated items, given funding, packed parcels, sorted veg, helped with packing, gone out delivering, collected donations, helped with fundraising, given prayer support, cleaned the fridges, spread the word, and all the various aspects of making it all happen.

While we are sad that this project is needed at all, we can be proud that we have supported one another in the local community through another very tough year. In 2025 the Ash Villages Food Parcels Project provided 1560 parcels for local families, feeding over 4600 people. On average we gave out 29 parcels a week, feeding 384 people in an average month. In our Christmas Parcels week we helped 128 households, feeding 393 people and giving out toys to 199 children.

We can proudly say that no-one in Ash, Ash Vale, Ash Green and Tongham need ever go hungry if they turn to us for help. We have an amazing community who donate items, fundraise, and give funds. We have a fantastic team of volunteers, and we have some wonderful local councillors, churches, schools, clubs, organisations, businesses and grant funders who support the work. Between you all, you have made this happen. The thank you messages we regularly receive are a testament to how important this work is. One recipient said “Thank you so much, …you have helped us more than you will ever know”.

On behalf of the Foodbank team and our local community – Thank you!

Would you like to give your support in 2026? The need has never been greater, as the community keeps growing and the cost of living keeps rising. If you can manage a regular donation it would be an enormous help, or just give what you can when you can. Here is the online giving link: https://givealittle.co/c/7a47190c-ad4e-4cf9-8662-da844101a41c

Do you need help? You can contact the usual agencies for a food parcel referral, or come to St Mary’s church and ask for Revd Neil Lambert or Alex our Project Manager for a church referral.

Community Cafe visitors from Holly Lodge

St Mary’s has a Community Cafe on Fridays in term time, 10am-1pm. It’s a lovely coffee morning where everyone in the community is welcome to come for a cuppa, chat to friends old and new, and lunch is served at 12.

Imagine our excitement when we were joined last week by some wonderful young people from Holly Lodge! They were brilliant at helping to host, passing the biscuits around, setting up the marble run for the little ones, and even helped us with our posters for the Macmillan coffee morning that is coming up on 26th September. They were a joy to have visiting us, and everyone really enjoyed the duck song too! What a lovely thing to do for Community Week, you brought a lot of smiles to all our faces!

Thank you for visiting and we hope to see you all again soon.

Foodbank Thanks to Holly Lodge

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!

Thank you all, and have a wonderful summer.

Harvest thanks to the Monday Beavers!

The Ash Villages Food Parcels Project team would like to say a big THANK YOU to the lovely 1st Ash Vale Beavers ‘Monday Group’ who visited us at The Chapel this week. We really appreciate all your wonderful donations, which filled up the donation boxes as you arrived. What a lot of goodies for the food parcels!

All these things will go out in the Food Parcels next week, and make a big difference to local families who are in need of a bit of help at this time. 

It was lots of fun telling you all about the Food Bank and you are all very good at Kims Game! You remembered lots of the things we had in the food parcel box. You were great at the 4 corners game and sleeping lions too!

Thank you for the beautiful Harvest pictures you made to help remind everyone to celebrate harvest and support the food parcels project. We will be sure to display them as part of the Harvest decorations at St Mary’s.

The church is celebrating Harvest Festival on Sunday 6th Otober this year, all welcome at the 10:30 service, and we will have refreshments afterwards. Those of you who like to get creative are welcome to come and help decorate the church (St Mary’s on Vale Road) on the Saturday morning too, it’s lots of fun! See you there.