Donations have increased again over the past few days, with some delicious food going to charities from Ted’s Veg and Pieminister at Borough Market, Cranswick Convenience Foods in Milton Keynes, Neal’s Yard Dairy and HSBC at Canary Wharf.
Arabica London are now reopening (for take away only) their central kitchen in Camberwell and their restaurants at Borough and King’s Cross. They have produced over 4000 meals for NHS staff and charities over the past couple of months, which is a fantastic achievement. Following this, they have committed to donate the surplus food from all of their sites as they reopen.
Many other businesses that had not previously donated their surplus food asked for our help to redistribute their remaining stocks before they closed for lockdown. When we explained about our online platform, they told us they would start donating regularly when they are able to reopen, which is great.
In just over a month, on July 11th, our inspirational co-founder Lotti will be celebrating her 95th birthday. I was going to buy her a skateboard, or a new set of roller blades, but it turns out what she really wants is a birthday fundraiser for Plan Zheroes.
When Lotti says “jump!” we only pause to ask “how high?” So, to grant the great lady her wish, we have assembled a crack team to organise the fundraiser.
Lotti’s daughter, Alix, will be liaising with the family. Lotti’s neighbour, Sue, who has been such a loyal PZ supporter from our early days, has a contact with the local council so we can get the message out to the Earl’s Court community where Lotti lives. Volunteer Tash, who did such a brilliant job producing our 2019 impact report, has been working on some online flyers and Dee is setting up a campaign on our CAF donation site and will be coordinating the social media posts. We’ll also be using the lovely film that Lydia made for us about Lotti. If you missed it first time round you can see it here.
Please let us know if you can help us promote the campaign to companies, colleagues or friends and family. We’ll be getting more information and the flyers out to everyone next week.
The message is very simple. With additional funding we could do so much more. Currently we operate with just one part-time paid member of staff. The rest of us are volunteers. With more paid staff we could identify more businesses that have surplus food. We know the food is out there, we know the charities that need it. We just need the people to connect the businesses to the charities.
Of course, under normal circumstances, we’d be having a party for Lotti. She does love parties and she is current World Champion at being the life and soul of them. When we had our “thank you” celebration for our volunteers earlier this year we talked about a summer party. I hope we can do that sooner rather than later.