FareShare Greater Manchester fights hunger and tackles food waste by distributing tonnes of surplus food to over 250 frontline charities, community organisations and schools in the region. At the same time the UK throws away 8.3 million tonnes of good food every year. FareShare stops food being wasted and gets it to where it is needed. We distribute to over 200 Community Food Members and new organisations are joining all the time. Our Community Food Members provide vitally needed meals, food parcels and snacks to hundreds of disadvantaged people every day. They work with a huge variety of people dealing with hardship, people who are homeless, unemployed, people dealing with substance abuse, the elderly, children and families, young adults, refugees and asylum-seekers at drop-ins, residential centres, SureStart centres, and breakfast and after-school clubs. FareShare Greater Manchester is managed by EMERGE www.emergemanchester.co.uk in partnership with FareShare UK. Every year our food donors deliver over 700 tonnes of fresh, frozen and long-life food to our depot at New Smithfield Market in East Manchester. We receive a wide range of food - bread, meat, vegetables, cans, ready-made meals, dairy products, and drinks - we never know exactly what we'll get each week. Some donors deliver every working day, others once or twice a week, others, a few times a year. We also 'capture' surplus edible food from the market every day and quality control it by hand. Staff together with a large team of volunteers deal with the deliveries and store the food in the warehouse. The food is then matched with the needs of our community food members, and delivered. Our aim is to make sure that everything delivered to us by our food donors finds a home. None of this would be possible without the generous donations of industry sponsors and charitable trusts. Our industry sponsors organise fund-raising events and give money, staff-time, and even equipment. We keep our costs low by running the service efficiently, but in order to expand the number of people we help we always need more support.
