Truro Foodbank - Volunteers

Volunteers are the life blood of foodbanks. Your skills could be just what we need!

There are thousands of volunteers across the UK, helping to ensure The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network gets emergency food to people in crisis.

Volunteers enjoy the team-working required to enable Truro Foodbank to operate and volunteer regularly on our rotas as a result. Whatever role you choose, you will make a real difference to the life of someone in crisis.

VOLUNTEER STORES/STOCKS

Volunteers in this role help to weigh, sort (by date and type) and store donated food before it’s made into parcels for customers to collect. This ensures we have the right food available at all times.

COORDINATING VOUCHERS

Foodbanks work with front line agencies who in turn refer customers to foodbanks. Some foodbanks have over 100 referral partners and in this role volunteers coordinate the issuing and distribution of vouchers to support agencies. Once the vouchers are redeemed the data they contain needs to be added to our central database. Full training and support is available.

HELPING DISTRIBUTE FOOD

Volunteers in this role meet clients and give out food parcels. They have an informal chat with customers over a cup of tea, discuss their situation and signpost to further support. These discussions can be very emotional because many customers are in crisis situations

The operational times for Truro Foodbank are on Mondays from 15:00 to 17:00, Tuesdays from 10:00 to 1200, and Thursdays from 10:00 to 12:30.  These are the times when volunteers come in to assist us

VOLUNTEERING AT CHRISTMAS

In December we often receive emails or calls from people kindly offering to volunteer for one or two days during the Christmas holiday season. This is extremely generous, but because demand can be very high at this time there is often not the time to devote to training people.  If you are thinking of volunteering around Christmas it would be more helpful if you could contact us around October to consider coming in to learn how we work at a less pressurised time.

INFORMATION EVENINGS

If you are considering volunteering to help at Truro Foodbank, or you are just interested in finding out more about what we do and why we are needed, you are welcome to come along to our quarterly information evenings.  At these evenings we explain the background reason for demand, the trends that are happening, the essential work we do with support agencies and the way we operate in sorting, storing and distributing food.

Please email us at trurofoodbank@gmail.com for further details.