LNER has provided a new van to FareShare Yorkshire, a charity that redistributes surplus food to foodbanks and community groups.

Every week, FareShare Yorkshire receives and redistributes enough food to feed up to 42,000 people across the region. The new van, funded by LNER’s Customer and Community Investment Fund, has been provided to their distribution centre in central Leeds and will enable the charity to provide good quality, nutritious food to around 40 more organisations, including school breakfast clubs, older people’s lunch clubs, homeless shelters, and community cafes in the West Yorkshire area.

In the past year alone, the charity has prevented over 2,000 tonnes of good food from being wasted and enabled it to be turned into 5 million meals. Volunteer drivers currently deliver food to Leeds, Bradford, York, Harrogate, Kirklees, Ryedale, Keighley and Harrogate from the central-Leeds base. The new van will mean the charity can add an extra eight deliveries per day to their schedule, plus add Selby into the locations they already provide food.

The charity not only receives and distributes fresh, chilled, frozen and ambient food, they also offer food hygiene and preparation training through their FullCrumb Kitchen scheme. The Kitchen provides the opportunity to retrain and gain valuable skills, supporting employment opportunities, as well as offering ‘how-to’ classes for their volunteer cooks, who are sometimes faced with an ingredient they may not be familiar with. The FullCrumb Kitchen YouTube channel also shares inventive recipes and cooking tips which make the most out of surplus items and there’s also plans to publish a cookbook full of nutritious recipes in the new year.

FareShare Yorkshire’s Deputy CEO Jonathan Williams, said; “The new van provided by LNER has given us a valuable lifeline, enabling us to distribute more quality food to those who need it. We can now make extra runs to our community groups and amazing volunteer cooks, meaning we can enable an extra 12,000 meals per week at full capacity. We know there are many people in need, and the van means we can reach more of them. We’re grateful to the LNER Customer and Community Investment Fund for the vital contribution they have made.”

LNER Customer and Community Manager, Rachael Wilson, said: “FareShare Yorkshire is a remarkable charity which makes a profound difference in people’s lives. The volume of food they receive and manage at their distribution centre is astonishing. LNER is incredibly proud to support them in the delivery of their vital service and we hope that the new van enables them to provide more meals and feed more people.”

FareShare Yorkshire are looking for volunteers to help them get surplus food to those who need it. More information is available on their website www.fareshareyorkshire.org

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