“Without volunteers the system wouldn’t work” The charity tackling food poverty in Salford

A food charity is appealing for volunteers to help those in need in Salford.

FareShare, based in east Manchester have already provided charities, schools and homeless shelters in Salford with over 130 tonnes of food.

The national charity deliver surplus food and, in turn, reduce food waste across the country.

Chris, who started volunteering at FareShare 2 years ago, said: “We get [food] from supermarkets and factories. Sometimes we get milk that’s perfectly fine, but has just been mislabelled.

“Only after I started here, I noticed that there are quite a few organisations that are helping out with supplying food for people who can’t afford to buy it.”

The 36-year-old, explained how customer services volunteers contact different charities in Salford and offer them the food that has been collected.

He said: “They do have some paid staff to oversee everything but, the bulk of the work that is picking all the orders and, quite a lot of the deliveries are all done by volunteers.

“If we didn’t have volunteers at FareShare, everything would just slow down.”

Currently, the charity donates to 32 Salford organisations and has distributed 318,038 meal portions whilst saving almost 500 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Miranda Kaunang, Head of development at FareShare Greater Manchester said: “There’s a lot of need out there, and good, affordable food is part of the way of helping people get out of poverty into a more sustainable situation.”

Image credit: Adiva Lewis