Click below to see our appeal for help in the 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.
Porch Boxes team wins Star Award
Porch Boxes are the proud recipient of a Bury Council Star Award for ‘Volunteers of the Year’. The Award was collected by our chairman, Julia, and her right hand man Frank (pictured).
Bury Council STAR ( Special Thanks & Recognition) Awards are used to identify individuals and teams who are making the difference and going the extra mile.
Thank you and congratulations to all of our volunteers.
Porch Boxes Annual General Meeting
The annual report for 2018 will be presented at the Porch Boxes AGM. The report summarises all of the activities, donations and expenditures for the year and the AGM is open to all who have an interest in Porch Boxes. If you’re an old friend to the charity, or just want to find out more about what we do, please come along.
When: 7:00pm Tuesday 26th March 2019
Where: Bridge Methodist Church, Milltown Street, Radcliffe, M26 1WD
Christmas 2017 Update
Many thanks to all those who have donated food, toiletries and toys in the busy period leading up to Christmas. As well as our routine orders for over 400 crisis packs every month we have prepared well over a hundred special Christmas hampers for individuals and families in the Bury area and provided toys for local children who might otherwise have had very few gifts.
January 2017 Update
It has been another very busy year for Porch Boxes. The numbers of packs given out in this last year are as follows
2016
Jan 420
Feb 331
March 478
April 333
May 389
June 305
July 353
Aug 391
Sep 399
Oct 477
Nov 534
December total of 985
Annual total of 5395 average of 450 per month.
A big thank you to everyone who has helped us this last year. We thank people for their donations of food, clothing, toys etc also for all the generous monetary donations from schools, churches, businesses and individuals and of course for all the volunteers who work tirelessly for the charity.
Porch Boxes have continued to be in discussion with Bury council about the possibility of setting up some form of direct access for food in Bury town Centre. No doubt there will more information on this in the coming months
Julia Rowlands
Chair of Porch Boxes
January 2017
