Royal Holloway’s students rallied together to donate food to the Runnymede Foodbank and packed festive gift bags for older people who spent the festive period alone. These projects are all student led as part of Royal Holloway Volunteering.
Students donate food to Runnymede Foodbank
During #iwill Week in November, students from the Royal Holloway foodbank team, successfully organised a Christmas collection for Runnymede Foodbank. The student volunteering team received enough donations from staff and fellow students, to fill an incredible 15 crates worth of food.
In November and December, these donations helped to support approximately 1,400 local people living in financial crisis with three days of emergency food. #iwill Week is a campaign that celebrates young people making a difference in their communities.
The team provided 400 Food4Lunch bags to local schools, each bag contained ingredients to make a two-course lunch for 10 days and these bags were given to families whose children would have normally received a free school meal.
300 Christmas Hampers were also packed and distributed across the local community, each one included a supermarket gift card enabling the families to buy fresh food for Christmas Day.
The Runnymede Foodbank is supported by The Trussell Trust, and works to combat poverty and hunger across the UK. In 2019, Runnymede gave out 43,731 emergency meals to people in crisis. No one in the community should have to face going hungry and Royal Holloway’s annual collection helps Runnymede Foodbank provide at least three days’ worth of nutritionally balanced emergency food to local people who are referred to them in a crisis.
Vasil Lazarov, student team leader and student at Royal Holloway, said: “During #iwill Week 2020, myself and the Royal Holloway foodbank team were delighted to receive so many donations from our campus community! We had no idea whether we would receive any donations, especially with the reduced number of staff and students on campus. However, we were met with an incredible response from the Royal Holloway staff and student community and collected an amazing number of crates for people in need, which was a lovely portrayal of the power our social action projects have.”
Phil Simcock, Volunteering Manager at Royal Holloway, said: “Supporting local residents in need has always been at the heart of volunteering for Royal Holloway students, and organising campus collections for the local foodbank has taken place annually for at least the past five years now. We know this is a practical way of serving our local community, especially making a difference at Christmas time when food crisis becomes a greater problem for people, and even more so during the pandemic.”
Gifts donated to local older people spending Christmas alone
Students from Royal Holloway Volunteering packed over 70 festive gift bags filled with donations from the university’s students and staff for local older people who spent Christmas alone.
The social action project saw students set up a socially distanced ‘Santa’s Workshop’ throughout November and December. The students packed festive bags which each included sweet treats, such as mince pies or a Christmas pudding, a small gift, a Christmas decoration and a Christmas card signed from the student volunteering team.
The gift bags were collected and distributed by the Egham Resident’s Association, The Village Centre in Englefield Green, Grove Court Retirement Housing and St John’s Church in Egham.
Royal Holloway students also donated gift bags to Merlewood Residential care home in Virginia Water.
On receiving the bags in December, Lisa Smither, Supported Living Manager, Runnymede Borough Council, said: “Thank you so much for thinking of our residents at Grove Court. The bags look great, so full of lovely gifts! We are really looking forward to delivering them as some of our residents have no families so this will be their only gift, other than the usual that they receive from us. They will be so happy.”
Luke Russell, Volunteering Coordinator at Royal Holloway, said: “It is fantastic to see that even in challenging times the Royal Holloway community has come together to help those in need. We are incredibly proud of our student leaders who coordinate these projects.”
