Wellbeing includes giving back to the community and we have back to our local food bank, the Epping Food Bank who do some tremendous work.
For the first time, Bancroft’s held a wellbeing week which was a tremendous success. The week focused on improving mental, emotional and physical wellbeing through a range of activities, including lunchtime forest walks, dancing in the morning and after-school yoga. While we enjoyed cake decorating, we recognised there are people in our community who are going without meals.
This inspired us to focus some of our efforts on trying to improve the wellbeing of the community too. So we decided the school body would donate to our local food bank. It was rewarding for us to know that we would be helping improve the wellbeing of people beyond our friends and classmates.
We wanted to get more involved in the food bank than just dropping our donation so Mrs. Channer, some sixth formers, and I decided to go and participate at Epping Food Bank.
Whilst unpacking all of the 152.6 kgs of supplies that Bancroft’s donated, we met the lovely people who made sure the Epping Food Bank runs smoothly. We were shown how all the items were sorted and catalogued and even had a try ourselves! We learnt that the food was distributed to many local areas as a pack of three days’ nutritionally balanced emergency food.
A common misconception about food banks is that they continually give people food, while in reality a voucher is needed from a referral agency. And they provide more than just food — they work alongside agencies such as Centrepoint to help get people’s lives back on track. Together they not only help adults but also children, and as of June 2019, more than 25,000 meals have been received by children in Epping Forest.
If you would like to get involved or support the food bank for more information please go to info@eppingforest.foodbank.org.uk.
