Dear Sir,
I would just like to thank the narrow minded views of the man who wrote into the Newton News about the “unnecessary” Food Bank a couple of weeks ago.
This story highlighted to me that Newton Aycliffe has a food bank, which I was previously unaware of. I am not in need of a food bank, however am educated enough to understand that not everyone is as fortunate.
In life you will always get individuals who take what they don’t deserve, even in my place of work you get people who come in to work repeatedly late, take longer than their hour for lunch, but the majority of us don’t.
Just two hours after reading the article in the paper we went to do our grocery shopping and the local food bank was set up outside the shop with a list of items you could buy to help out. We went and set one bag aside for the food bank, which we donated afterwards. We don’t repeatedly have spare cash to do this, but a few sacrifices from our own shopping every now and then seems worthwhile.
When I donated my bag of food, I did not feel bitter that someone undeserving may receive the food I had worked hard to buy. I simply thought, I hope someone can feed their children this week, and feel happy that this week someone is eating and not as hungry as they were the week before.
One day any of us may need the food bank for one reason or another, redundancy, divorce, who knows. But what I do know is if I ever need help, I know now where to go.
It would be great if Aycliffe food bank could provide us details of how volunteers could help, as I’m sure there will be a lot of proud Newtonians (including myself) who would be willing to give up some spare time to help out.
It may also benefit the gentleman who wrote in to spend a few hours at the food bank helping out to see the benefits of this cause. The time it took him to write his mindless article could have been spent helping families in need.
p.s I would also like to thank this man for highlighting a certain supermarket who would not donate to our food bank. I am proud to say I won’t ever give them another penny of my money.
Leyanne Pennington-Foster