Fairshare partnership at The Arc

From August, we will be partnering together with Asda as part of the FairShare initiative.

This campaign will see our newest community building, The Arc, receiving food twice a week to provide meals and snacks for youngsters and families attending their activities.

Asda teamed up with FairShare in 2013 to ensure their surplus food would be used to benefit charities and community projects in the UK. The food provided will be a mixture of perishable and non perishable items that would otherwise be sent to landfill.

Fran Rhodes, Community Regeneration Co-ordinator here at Ongo, said: “It’s great to be partnering with Asda on this initiative that will definitely benefit the Westcliff community.

“We’re planning to use the food in our cafe, to cook meals and snacks to be given out at our youth club and other activities we hold at The Arc. We’re also looking at the possibility of running a tea time club a couple of times a week, and using this food to cook healthy meals for families that need a little extra support.

“We’d like to thank Asda and FairShare for partnering with us and we’re excited to get started with this exciting project.”

This isn’t the first time we’ve partnered with FairShare to support their communities. The Viking Centre in Barton on Humber has also received food on a regular basis from the Tesco store in the town, which was used to cook meals for a weekly tea time club, as well as for snacks at various activities held at the centre.

Fairshare is a national charity that works to reduce food waste. They also regulate organisation’s contracts with supermarkets to ensure excellent food hygiene standards are maintained wherever food is being prepared.