Grant news!

The Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls and The Plough Inn are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a very timely £5000 grant from the Quartet Community Foundation’s Coronavirus Response Fund to help to continue our community fresh food box deliveries until the end of June.

What started as support for members of our immediate community has increased massively as the crisis has progressed. We’ve been doing delivery runs twice a week for 7 weeks now and have so far delivered over 2600 fruit+veg boxes and over 1000 cooked meals to folks struggling to obtain fresh, healthy food as a result of the pandemic. We’ve been receiving requests through our online form as well as referrals from the Bristol Food Service Helpline, Aid Box Community, Project Mama and various other organisations representing vulnerable people in the city. As the demand increases, this grant enables us to increase our deliveries. We have now been joined by the Lion, Chelsea, Pipe and Slippers and Star & Garter pubs as packing venues, each bringing their own community of volunteers and each adding around 100 boxes per day to our capacity.

This is all thanks to generous donations received through our Fundsurfer page and now the Quartet Foundation as well as donations of space, equipment and extra food plus a whole army of volunteers (around 50 people each delivery day)*. As each delivery run costs around £1250 and growing, the grant from Quartet is most welcome, but we do need to keep the donations rolling in so we can continue providing this essential service for our community over the coming weeks and meet the increasing demand.

Please share and donate if you can. All the information on how to order a box, donate or volunteer is on our fundsurfer page at: https://www.fundsurfer.com/crowdfund/community-care-package

• 

• 

• 

• 

*Big big thanks to everyone who is making this happen – the Plough crew doing all the buying and logistics; the packers and drivers from the Cowfolk; Linner, Izzy and Peg who’ve sewn a load of masks; Lemmy and UWE who are providing a food-safe disinfectant; All Hallows for letting us use their hall; the Volunteer Tavern for letting Izzy and Rosie use their kitchen to do cooked meals while the Plough’s kitchen is being refurbished; Mark Kidner from Arthur David who’s getting us bargains on fruit and veg; Hobbs bakery who are donating bread; Essentials Wholefoods who have donated food; Three Wise Monkeys, Southville Deli, Hugos, Pawsons and Ashton Fruit Shop who’ve been providing us with crates for the veg boxes; and everyone who has donated plastic takeaway tubs for the cooked meals.