Category: Food & Community Hub

Earlier this year you may have been lucky enough to have your bags packed at Morrisons by a keen bunch of local Beavers, Cubs and Scouts from the 1st Openwoodgate Scout group.

Over a six hour stint, children from all three age groups and supervised by Leaders and parents, raised nearly £1000 from their efforts!

It was decided that the monies should be split between the pack’s funds and Hope for Belper, which among other projects operates the Basic Idea food bank in the town.

Pictured are four of Hope for’s trustees, Caroline Stoddart, Helen Greenwood, Paul Linford and Gareth Greenwood, receiving a cheque for £474 from some of the cubs involved in the bag pack.

The presentation took place at the cubs’ weekly Wednesday evening gathering at St Mark’s Church, Openwoodgate.

Sharon Marshall, the Group Scout Leader said it was “great to see the children all working together and helping others.”

Hope for Belper chair Gareth Greenwood added: “We are thrilled that the scout groups have chosen to be so generous towards their town, in giving half the money raised towards Hope projects!”

Until now, the only places we have had donation points for ‘The Basic Idea’ have been in local church buildings – whilst these are accessable to most people, we have been looking for a way to make donating simpler.

So, to make it even easier for our friends and neighbours living around the Gregory’s Way and John O’Gaunts Way areas of town to donate items to ‘The Basic Idea’ we have partnered with the local team at the TESCO Express to provide a donation point in store.

The donation point can be found towards the front of the shop near the tills.

 Hope’s Basic Idea food bank project has been boosted by Harvest Festival contributions from several local churches over recent weeks.

But organisers are continuing to appeal for donations to help needy families in the town with demand increasing over the past 12 months.

Now in its fourth year, the project has helped 138 households in the Belper area in 2012 to date, having provided assistance to 111 across the whole of last year.

Some updated information on the project, and how you can help, can be found here.

A group of Belper youngsters has helped make a short film highlighting the work of Hope’s Basic Idea food bank project.

Children from local churches went to find out why and how provisions donated by the community can make such a difference to local people in desperate need.

The children did all the filming and asked the questions they wanted to ask.

The resulting film has now been uploaded to YouTube and can be viewed here.

Hope for Belper’s first project of 2009 has been designed with the credit crunch in mind.

Called The Basic Idea, the basic idea is to provide basic food and toiletry items to familes in financial crisis.

Boxes for collection of items are being put in local churches with the intention that those who would like to and are able to do so will purchase one extra item to put in them every time they go shopping.

We are also looking for volunteers to pack and deliver boxes as families are referred. We anticipate that this will not be a big commitment, especially in the first few months.

If this is something you may be able to help with, but would like more details, please contact ggandhg@aol.com  or  jo.lambourne@gmail.com.

There are some projects that just seem so timely and demonstrate God’s uncanny knack of spurring people in to action.

‘The Basic Idea’ appears to be one of those and it has got off the ground with a tremendous groundswell of support from congregations around Belper.

See the projects Page for updates on the progress of this project and contact details for finding out more and how you might be involved now or in the future.