2 tonnes of food donated to Sunderland Foodbank will help 300 homes in the city

MBC Arts & Wellbeing, a community interest company based in Norfolk Street, Sunniside, usually helps city residents through its arts and crafts provision.

But with the pandemic grinding their workshops, exhibitions and classes to a halt, they’ve had to come up with alternative ways to help the community.

After recognising the urgent need for food and cleaning products by those hit hardest by the pandemic, they began applying for funding to help.

They were awarded £4,000 by The Barbour Foundation, which was then added to by £500 of products from Bookers in Hendon and another £500 of products from Macro in Washington after the funds were used to buy foods and cleaning products for care packages at the stores.

The resulting packages are being split three ways, between foodbanks in Sunderland central, Hetton and Washington.

Mark Burns Cassell, executive director at the CIC, said: “Covid-19 hit our organisation really hard and we lost a lot of our long-standing contracts and projects we had funding for, but we’re a community interest company and we still wanted to meet the needs of the community and support people, especially those who’ve been most affected by the pandemic.

"We started looking at whether we could be a resource for those people.”

As well as the funds paying for food for approximately 300 homes, which will be allocated through the foodbanks, the money will pay for 50 care packages for the elderly and 50 children’s education packs for children who are shielding or isolating.

"We wanted to access as many areas of the city and working with the foodbanks has allowed us to do that and to make sure the packages go to those who really need it,” said Mark. "The food is already going out to people and we’ve had some great feedback.

"We’re really grateful to The Barbour Foundation, Bookers and Macro and it’s fantastic to see so many businesses in the city stepping up to the plate to help support people in this crisis.”

MBC is one of the arts organisations in the city which has received vital funding through the Government’s Culture Recovery Fund.

See how you can help Sunderland foodbanks here.

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