Another successful year for the Newbury Weekly News Over 80's Parcel Fund
Christmas has arrived for nearly 2,000 elderly residents.
The Newbury Weekly News Over 80s’ food parcels have now all been delivered.
And coordinator Jo Fulker said: “My thanks go to everyone who has helped make this possible, despite everything, which started with support from donations from many companies, very kind individuals and also fundraising events that took place during the last three months.
“Everyone involved in any way did so because they are very keen to help make all our over 80-year-old recipients’ Christmas a special one and to help them realise they will always be remembered by their local community.”
The build-up to the big day began on Friday at the Newbury Weekly News offices in Faraday Road, when pupils from Trinity, St Bartholomew’s and Kennet schools all pitched in to help.
And this year Newbury College kindly gave up some of their time to help unpack from the distribution vans, which are donated by Camp Hopson and Swift.
The pupils helped to fill our three distribution centres with the lovely food parcels and also some hand sanitiser that had been donated to us specially for the parcels this year.
The vans had been packed prior to that at Sainsbury’s by the staff members who had organised the packing and the logistics.
“My special thanks go to Carol Irwin, who has managed the Sainsbury’s side of this project from the ordering of the food, the logistics of the parcel packing to finally making sure the 1,750 parcels were sent to the correct distribution centres,” said Mrs Fulker.
“The Camp Hopson van arrived full of food and was unpacked by St Bartholomew’s sixth-formers, making the Newbury News storeroom full with 960 parcels of food inside.
“The All Saints’ Church Hall in Upper Bucklebury was also filled with nearly 600 parcels after the Swift van arrived full to the brim and last but not least, the Royal British Legion hall in Hungerford was also filled with parcels – the central point for the Hungerford and Kintbury parcels.
“We then had school children from St Bartholomew’s and students from Newbury college arriving to start the massive job of delivering many of the Newbury parcels.
“At the same time Trinity pupils and Kennet School pupils were busy unpacking and also distributing parcels from Bucklebury to our Thatcham residents.”
A huge thank you also went to Sue Kitchener, John Smart and Ted and Daphne Angell.
“I would like to thank Sue Kitchener for coordinating the Newbury parcels, John Smart from Thatcham Rotary Club, for the ones going out to Thatcham and the villages and Ted and Daphne Angell, from CHAIN, for organising the Hungerford parcels, as without these people the logistics of the parcel distribution would be an impossible task,” added Mrs Fulker.
On a frosty Saturday morning, the Swift van arrived at Hungerford’s Royal British Legion, to deliver the parcels to Hungerford and Kintbury.
“At each of the three centres it was then amazing to see so many kind-hearted volunteers from Newbury Rotary Club, CHAIN in Hungerford, Newbury Young Farmers and many other people who came to our distribution centres and gave up their time to make the door-to-door deliveries to every over-80-year-old on our parcel fund list, which this year was about 1,750 recipients,” said Mrs Fulker.
Residents in 10 local nursing homes were not forgotten and received a tin of chocolates to share and St Gabriel’s Convent in Cold Ash were taken a lovely basket of fruit to be enjoyed by all the nuns.
The Newbury Weekly News Over 80s’ Parcel Fund, supported by Greenham Trust – which has been taking place in some form for more than 100 years now – has been successfully completed once more.
And Mrs Fulker said she has already started to read many lovely letters of thanks.
“To me that just confirms how much pleasure these parcels bring to so many of our elderly recipients and how even today they are still so much appreciated,” she added. “For so many it really does help to brighten up their Christmas.”
