Volunteering at The Bread and Butter Thing

How we are delivering on our corporate social responsibility plan through volunteering

Making a difference to the health and wellbeing of our local population is important to the TU. As part of our corporate social responsibility plan each member of our team has 5 volunteering days per year, available to use to support good causes.

Food poverty can have a huge negative impact on people’s health and wellbeing, and so some of our team headed down to help out at The Bread and Butter Thing (TBBT).

TBBT is a Food Club that offers healthy, discounted food to individuals and families across the North of England. This is food that would have otherwise gone to waste for various reasons, including things like excess produce and overly stringent supermarket quality checks. The charity redistributes this food via their 60 community hubs, which are managed by staff and local volunteers. On 29^th September, we visited TBBT’s warehouse in Trafford Park to add a few extra pairs of hands to the day’s activities.

We helped the team at TBBT by taking on the following tasks:

• Bagging up the fresh fruit and veg, cupboard goods (and marveling at the quality of the food – exclaiming things like ‘look at these potatoes!!’).
• Setting up a mini packing production line in the chill section of the warehouse to get the frozen/ chilled bags packed and on to crates in record speed (…we imagine but cannot verify).
• Loading up the TBBT vans with bags, ready for sending to local community hubs.
• Cleaning used boxes ready for sending back out.
• Unloading the empty crates and cleaning up the warehouse.

A huge thank you to TBBT for having us, teaching us about the impact TBBT has on our local communities and allowing us to see many ‘cogs’ that make the whole operation run so smoothly.

It was a great opportunity for our team to work together, learn about the behind the scenes of food redistribution and make a tangible, positive impact!

TBBT are always looking for volunteers (individually or as groups), so if you have volunteer hours to use then TBBT would be very glad to have you for any time you can spare! If you would like more information, please visit https://www.breadandbutterthing.org/contact-us.

Thank you to our incredible team of TU volunteers and thank you to The Bread and Butter Thing!

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