Covid19 Pandemic Update

The Covid19 pandemic has brought a variety of challenges across our community. Lots of families are experiencing reductions in their income and difficulties in accessing the food they need.

Porch Boxes are continuing to work hard to provide Crisis Packs during this difficult time, working with their regular local agencies, Social Services, Health Visitors, GP’s etc. to identify areas of need.

We receive most of our regular donations from either churches or schools and from the donation boxes in various Supermarkets around the area. As churches and schools are now closed for the foreseeable future, we are receiving significantly fewer donations. We have also had to make changes to how we operate our warehouse, so it is difficult for us to accept donations there.

We would like to ask all our regular contributors, particularly those who normally donate at their church or school, to deliver their donations to their nearest donation point.

Some of our donation points have been temporarily removed to allow for social distancing so please use one of the below locations.

We thank you all for your continued support.

ASDA: Radcliffe, Pilsworth & Bury

Morrisons: Whitefield & Ramsbottom

TESCO: Bury & Ramsbottom

*NEW GARDEN BINS*

33 Holthouse Rd Tottington  

14 Thirsk Close Woolfold  

31 Greenheys Cr Greenmount

Christmas Appeal

Every year Porch Boxes provides support to families over the festive season. This year we are looking for the following items, but as always, anything that you can donate will be gratefully accepted.

• Tinned ravioli

• Tinned potatoes

• Tinned beans and sausages

• Tins of meat

• Tinned tuna

• Tinned stews, spaghetti bolognese, meatballs and chilli

• Tinned hot dogs
• Spaghetti

• Crisps

• Cracker biscuits

• Biscuits
• Bottles of squash

• Canned drinks

• Tea bags [packs of 40]

• Small jars of coffee

• Hot Chocolate

• Cake bars

• Single sponge puddings

• Custard

• Rice Pudding

• Miniature jars of jam
• Selection boxes
• Chocolate bars
• Christmas themed chocolates and cakes

New Facebook Page!

Porch Boxes has a new Facebook page. Head over to https://m.facebook.com/porchboxes and click like to receive all our news and updates

New donation point

We are now collecting donations from Tesco Bury.

Read our latest Annual Reports & Accounts

Following the AGM held in March 2019, the Porch Boxes Annual Report & Accounts have been uploaded. Click here to view.

Porch Boxes Annual General Meeting 2020

The 2020 Annual General Meeting will be held on Tuesday 24th March, commencing 7pm prompt, at Bridge Community Church, Radcliffe (formerly known as Bridge Methodist Church).

The meeting will be held in the 1st floor meeting room adjacent to the Porch Boxes Storeroom. Lift access is available.

Hundreds of Food Packs made up for Christmas

Volunteers at Porch have been working tirelessly throughout December to get hundreds of food packs ready for distribution. If you’d like to support Porch you can still donate items at any one of our local drop off points or funds via our webpage.

Porch Boxes featured in Bury Times

Click below to see our appeal for help in the Bury Times

Bury Times

Update – August 2018

The Porch Box volunteers have been busy over the summer as the demand for crisis food packs stays high. The agencies we deal with tell us that many families are struggling to feed children during the school holidays. Today a support worker based in a local primary school described how she is continuing to work voluntarily to keep in touch with her families during the summer holiday and told us that she is receiving more requests for help from families who have always managed in the past and have no experience of the benefits system.

We now have collection boxes for non-perishable food in six local supermarkets and receive some surplus fresh food. These are important weekly sources of donations and we thank the supermarkets for their help. However we still spend around £1000 every month buying in enough food to meet demand. The harvest collections from schools and churches should be a great help in the autumn.

Our main weekly volunteer session is on a Wednesday morning and today was very typical, with nearly a hundred crisis packs delivered to eleven different agencies.

Read our latest Annual Report & Feedback

The 2017 annual report and accounts has been published following the Annual General Meeting. You can read the report here, and see some feedback from our user agencies.