Thornwood Primary School has been a strong supporter of the NW Glasgow Foodbank for several years.

Facts about the Glasgow NW Foodbank

• The Glasgow NW Foodbank gives out 3 days of emergency food to those that are in crisis and have been referred to them by one of their agencies.
• Food is donated by individuals, schools, churches and other organisations.
• Since their launch in May 2013 they have fed 3475 adults and 2628 children, totalling 6103 people for three days each. That’s almost 55,000 meals.
• Since starting to collect for the Glasgow NW Foodbank in April 2013, Thornwood Primary has contributed 323.9kg of food. That’s the equivalent of 370 meals.

Here is a copy of a letter from Kyle McCormick, Project Manager to Thornwood Primary.

Dear Thornwood Primary School,

The Glasgow NW Foodbank was launched in May 2013. In run up to this the foodbank started its appeal for food. Having two daughters at Thornwood Primary, we had direct contact with the school so we asked if they could help us to collect food for our launch. At the time P4 were about to start an enterprise. They asked us if they could find out more about the foodbank, so they could then tell the school about it and coordinate a food drive as a class.  The children were very interested in finding out about the foodbank and asked some very difficult questions about our work. When the collection started the whole school got behind it and the collection point remained open until the end of the school year. The thing about opening a foodbank is that you do not know who your donors or clients are going to be. Once the foodbank was opened we soon realised that some of the parents that we stood beside daily in the school playground came to use our foodbank. When we realised that the people we were asking to help were the people that needed help it became apparent that the need for a foodbank is huge within our locality.

The collections did not end there. The following year P5 kick started the food drive again with the Harvest assembly foodbank collection. Subsequently there have been regular collections at Thornwood with a donations box in place at the school regularly. Thornwood Primary is the first school to actively seek collections for out foodbank and is now looking to set up a permanent collection point within the establishment.

The support of Thornwood Primary has been fantastic. At Harvest some of the pupils were given money from the foodbank to help us buy some of the food that we needed. We aimed to provide the necessities on a low budget and the exercise allowed the children to grasp the value of money which will hopefully help them in the future. As I write the current P4 class have chosen to use their enterprise profits to buy food for the Glasgow NW Foodbank.  This will be of great benefit especially during the Christmas period. These young children who are thinking about those who are less fortunate than themselves should be extremely proud of what they have done.

Thank you to all at Thornwood Primary. Your efforts have been amazing!

Kyle McCormick

Project Manager