Traveller community donations help Wrexham Foodbank hit biggest donation day ever

Wrexham’s Foodbank had the busiest ever day for donations, with over 2500KG donated inside 24 hours.

Part of the donation spike came from a response to a viral social media challenge where members of the Traveller community across the UK have been filling up shopping trolleys for local foodbanks as part of what has been dubbed the ‘foodbank challenge’.

The challenge works by people filming themselves filling a trolley then nominating friends and family to take part by donating a trolley full of goods within 48 hours.

Wrexham’s Foodbank told us: “We had over 800kg from Asda which mostly came from the travelling community”, with collections in Asda, and Tesco Wrexham and Tesco Cefn Mawr locally.

They added they were ‘grateful for all donations that enable us to continue supporting those in crisis in Wrexham’.

“A big thank you to everyone who has donated and to our volunteers who are putting in extra hours over the weekend and the next few weeks to process it all.”

Up the road in Deeside 70 trolleys of food have been donated in the past few days as the challenge was taken up.

The challenge was started by Traveller man and new father Watson Harrop, 30, of Bishops Auckland, County Durham.

Mr Harrop decided to take action after noticing families in his local area struggling.

While out shopping for his three-month-old daughter at his local Tesco last Thursday, he spontaneously decided to fill a trolley full of food to donate to the store’s foodbank according travellerstimes.org.uk

Mr Harrop says enough food for around 18,000 meals has been donated in Bishop Auckland alone, a small market town with a population of less than 30,000. In an interview with Travellers Times Watson Harrop said: “In my local town alone the Tesco has had over six tonnes of food donated in just one week – that’s enough to make 8,000 meals.

“It’s overwhelming how many people have helped and donated. It’s caused an avalanche of different communities coming together. It doesn’t matter if you’re Traveller, Pakistani, black, white I decided we’re going to come together and make a difference for people who are less fortunate than us over the Christmas period.”

You can read more of his interview here.

Wrexham Foodbank’s warehouse in Dean Road (post code LL13 9EH) will be open Tuesday 10-18.30 and Friday 10-18.00 this week for people wanting to bring Reverse Advent calendar donations in.