When Maureen Cummings set up Old Kilpatrick Food Parcels in the spring of 2020 she didn’t imagine she would be using the service herself a year later.
Maureen and husband Gordon started helping by picking up prescriptions for people in the village who couldn’t get out themselves at the start of the first lockdown in April 2020.
But just a year later Maureen found herself turning to the foodbank for support, after losing her job.
Now, at the helm, she has expanded the lifeline which has now fed 20,000 people, opened a warm hub to help those struggling to heat their home and, crucially, secured £90,000 of funding to ensure the service’s future with enough money to pay the bills and buy supplies until 2025.
The funding news comes after the service marked its busiest month yet handing out more than 14,000 items of food – including 153 emergency food parcels - in the week leading up to Christmas.
When Maureen and Gordon launched OKFP in 2020 they were initially told there was no appetite for a foodbank in Old Kilpatrick, but quickly discovered that wasn’t the case.
Maureen explained: “We were told from the get-go that there wasn’t a demand in our area. Lots of locals said that to us. People said we were wasting our time, but that wasn’t the feeling we were getting.
“At the start of the pandemic my husband and I were delivering prescriptions – the feedback was great. We thought we’d help people get through the summer and then get back to our day jobs.
“Since then we’ve had about 120 volunteers come through our doors to help us since we started. And we’re approaching 20,000 people we’ve provided food for.
“It wasn’t our intention when we started helping out.”
In 2021, she too became one of those people.
Maureen said: “A lot of us, including myself, have all needed to use the foodbank services.
“When I lost my job in 2021 I needed help.”
She describes her team as a “family” adding: “We’re dealing with a lot of sadness that people endure by walking in the door.
“Our role is to give them a warm welcome. And that’s what they get from every single volunteer.
“A lot of our volunteers know what that first experience felt like.
“They know how it feels to stand at the door and question if you’re going to go in. They know the anxiety and so they know the importance of that smiling face as you walk in the door.”
To continue to meet growing demand – “the number of families needing help is increasing by tenfold over the year,” says Maureen – OKFP will continue to expand its reach in 2023 thanks to the funding from the National Lottery’s Communities Fund.
Maureen said: “It’s a huge pressure on us making sure we can afford to pay our rent and the bills.
“Any money we get has to go towards buying what we need. There’s always a worry of how we can keep the doors open for this much-needed service.
“Thankfully our funding application was very well received and they were delighted to offer the support to basically pay our bills for the next two years.
“It’s phenomenal and means so much to me personally, but also to our volunteers and staff. To have that security and pressure off our shoulders allows us to plan ahead because we know that we’ll be here.
“When we were finally able to announce it to our volunteers and staff members there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The cheer that went up raised the roof.”
She added: “We always lived month-to-month. We’d have to see what we could do to bring a bit of money in, be that a fish supper Friday, a movie night or a fundraiser.”
With sky-high inflation and energy bills, the charity was braced for a challenging winter – turning their popular Chatty Cafe into a warm hub, and experiencing record demand for their services.
Maureen continued: “The week leading up to Christmas was our busiest week to date.
“We gave emergency food parcels to 153 families in one week. Each of those families are three or four people, so a lot of individuals got help from us.
“We doubled the amount of food people could take in the last week because we thought there was no point in us having a full stockroom when we were closed over Christmas. Families could really be doing with the extra food.
“Between December 19 and December 23 we estimate that about 14,000 items of food went out our door.
“On Christmas Eve we still had families looking for food. We opened an hour a day for emergency food between Christmas and New Year and we’ve had families coming every day. We’ve been doing maintenance whilst we’re closed, and families were turning up whilst we were closed to ask for help.
“Because of the type of charity we are, we don’t turn anyone away.
“There’s no point in us having food in the stockroom when people at home don’t have very much.”
The funding from the National Lottery now ensures OKFP has a secure future – with Maureen keen to invite anyone along to visit their facilities.
She said: “We’re totally motivated for the year ahead. It’s a huge boost and it’s going to make a world of difference.
“Not having the pressure is a wonderful feeling. I didn’t realise I was carrying it around until we got the funding, and then I felt a wee bit lighter.
“I’m so grateful that we were chosen for support.
“Our fairy lights are always on, the music is always playing and there is always a lot of happiness. That’s always important when someone is walking through your door with trauma.
“The people coming regularly come for far more than food.
“Food brings many through the door the first time, but it’s not the food they come back for time and time
again.
“We have multiple people who come back every day. You can only take food from the pantry once a week. But people come every day to enjoy spending time here with people to chat to.”
The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland chair Kate Still said: “This project, delivered by Old Kilpatrick Food Parcels, is a great example of community activity in action showing just what can be achieved when people come together for a common cause or to help others.
“It’s all thanks to National Lottery players that we can help give charities and community groups throughout Scotland greater certainty during challenging
times.”
To find out more about OKFP visit okfp.org.uk.
