10 years of Cobham Area Foodbank
Cobham Area Foodbank has been running for 10 years and we’re so thankful for your continued support and generosity. We are blessed to be part of a very giving and compassionate community that responds to all our appeals and requests for staple foods and essential items for our local families in need.
You maybe interested to know that during this festive season, we prepared special hampers, with fresh meat and vegetables, for many local families who use our foodbank, to brighten up their Christmas. We also delivered many of these hampers to the clients’ homes, where they could not collect them. Many groups, organisations, choirs, churches and neighbourhood gatherings have kindly donated food and generous funds that enabled us to add a small gift card to our handouts, to ease the financial burden that we all face at this time of the year.
How did we do in 2023?
In 2023, we helped about a thousand local families, who were struggling to pay the rising energy and other household bills, the cost of living and bring food to the table, especially over the festive season. Cobham Area Foodbank distributed over 34,000kg of food in 2023 and, since we opened in 2013, we’ve provided 250 tonnes of food and essential items to local families in need. We are very grateful to all the agencies who help us identify those people in need, and provide the vouchers for food distribution. Some of these include: the Cobham Centre for the Community, PA Housing, Oasis, Esher CAB, Weybridge Job Centre Plus, as well as many new additions, who are involved to make sure that people in our area in need are well cared for.
Thank you to our volunteers
We are very fortunate to have a wonderful team of cheerful and flexible volunteers to keep our operation running smoothly throughout the year, ensuring our supplies are adequate, even as demand from local families in need is growing. Thank you to each and everyone of you!
We’re honoured to have been chosen as Squires Garden Centre, Cobham charity of the year and we really appreciate their support this year.
Christmas Tin Tree
We are grateful for all the donations we receive, but sadly we get stock that is past its best before date and we can’t distribute it to our clients, for health and safety reasons. However, one of our great supporters of food and money, St Martin’s Church, East Horsley came up with a brilliant idea to turn these “out of date tins” into a festive Tin Tree for their Christmas Tree Festival. Thank you to our creative volunteer Philly who designed and assembled this amazing tree. You can see the dates on the tins in the picture above. What a wonderful way to celebrate the spirit of giving and recycling!
How can you help us in 2024?
Thank you very much for your continued support, we couldn’t do this without the generosity of our community and volunteers. If you haven’t already, please follow us on Facebook or Twitter and look out for the list of key essential items we publish regularly. You can also find our latest list of items on BanktheFood app (which you can download using the QR code below) and you can donate these items at the collection points at local churches, supermarkets and Cobham Rugby Club.
If you or any organisations in the local community would like to make financial contributions, you can donate directly into our bank account.
Alternatively you can also donate financial contributions into our account with ‘Wonderful Organisation’ – more details here or you can scan this QR code: 
Did you know we also work with Elmbridge Lottery? Find out how here.
With very best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year.
Christina
Christina van Roest MA
Trustee & General Manager