A different working day for many of our team last week. As a company we’re proud to be part of Tesco’s partnership with Fareshare and their tenth annual Winter Food Collection. From 1-3 December, Tesco held their Winter Food Collection in their large stores and our team volunteered across a number of these, including Leytonstone, Twickenham, Hounslow, Catford, and Sevenoaks.
Newsteer wanted to get involved in corporate volunteering as one element of our ESG strategy and vision for the business. A natural synergy, with Tesco being one of our key clients, we chose to volunteer at stores where we are active for many of our clients.
Associate Director, Mark Byles, co-leads the ESG strategy at Newsteer, and volunteered at Tesco’s Leytonstone store:
“It was a fantastic afternoon volunteering with our client Tesco and partner Fareshare to work together with our local communities to address the cost of living crisis. At Newsteer we want to ‘be the change’ in our communities and facilitating donations from the generous people of LB Waltham Forest to those most in need was both rewarding and inspiring.”
The volunteers’ role was to direct the attention of customers to the FareShare shopping list as they enter the store. The shopping list helps customers know what types of food to donate to FareShare and is based on what was identified by the charities as most needed.
Senior Surveyor, Jayne McCarthy, headed to Tesco Sevenoaks to volunteer:
“I was worried I would be the only volunteer there but there were never less than 3 and even 6 people helping at some times. Special mention must go to the two primary school boys who were the most effective at breaking down social barriers. I also met someone who worked at the Food Hub that would be benefitting. It was really good fun and the customers of Sevenoaks were very generous.”
In addition to volunteering, the team also did a supermarket sweep (!), purchasing a trolley with contents to the value of £100 to donate.
Brian Sloggett, Newsteer’s Chairman, volunteered at Tesco in Twickenham.
“The work that Fareshare does is inspirational, and it was great on both a personal and professional level to play our part in Tesco’s winter food collection. The generosity of customers and all the volunteers will directly help those facing food poverty, and I am incredibly proud of everyone who took the time get involved!”
The food we collected was picked up by a local charity or FareShare Regional Centre from the store. Tesco also provide a 20% financial top-up to give further support to FareShare and ensure they don’t profit from customer donations. From there, FareShare delivers the food to frontline charities, foodbanks, breakfast clubs and community groups that support people facing food poverty. Last year, FareShare UK redistributed more than 55,000 tonnes of food to over 9,500 charities and community groups, enough to provide the equivalent of nearly 132 million meals – or four meals every second – for people struggling to put food on the table.
Jessica Wilson, Associate Director, who co-leads our ESG strategy, said:
“We had a great time volunteering for FareShare as part of the Tesco Winter Food Collection. We are proud to support such an important cause which is particularly critical given the current cost of living crisis. The level of engagement and generous donations from the local community to Tesco Leytonstone was especially inspiring.”
FareShare is the UK’s largest food redistribution charity, providing food to more than 9,500 charities and community groups, such as breakfast clubs, community centres and homeless hostels, supporting people facing food insecurity.
