Tag Archives: foodbank

THE Feed Clare Foodbank has resumed operations at the Kincora Building in the Town Centre on Friday mornings. Karen Cassidy is involved in running it, and she said there had been huge demand for its support in the run up to Christmas. “We didn’t open on Christmas week, that would have been the 23rd. The week before we had a double week, rather than opening a few days before Christmas, and I think we had our highest numbers ever on that day. We were so busy, my goodness, we really were busy.” When she spoke to the Champion last Friday, she said the first Foodbank of 2023 hadn’t been overly hectic. “Today wasn’t too bad. I think people probably weren’t too sure if we were open or not. It’s always like that in January, it takes people a week or two to realise it’s back open again, even though we always advertise that it’s open.” Extremely high inflation has made …

THE Feed Clare foodbank at the Kincora building in Shannon Town Centre, is now only operating every second Friday. Karen Cassidy has been involved in its operation for years, and she said the last few months have seen a huge jump in demand. “Oh gosh, yeah. In the last two months I’d say we’ve had an increase of about one third. Last month I think we had 22 new applicants, which is a lot for a small town like Shannon.” On an average week it provides support to around 50 families. “I suppose we have about 120 on our list altogether. Not all of them would come every week, some would come once a month or something like that. But that’s the situation now.” All levels of society are grappling with the worst level of inflation seen in decades, but it’s harder for some than others. “I had a single mother come in recently, she would have five or six …

A SHANNON food bank is set to close for most of the last two months of the year, because the demand for what it offers is too great. Feed Clare has been operating at the Kincora building in the Town Centre for some time, but last Friday was the first time it opened in three weeks, as it had run out of food to distribute. Local woman Karen Cassidy is involved in running Feed Clare and she explained why it hadn’t been open. “We ran out of supplies, we just have a bigger number of people coming in, so obviously we’ve been going through our supplies more quickly, so we had to close until our next delivery was due. We’re with Food Cloud and we’re allotted a certain amount every year, now we’ve applied for more credit from them, but we have to wait and see.” While a fresh delivery last week allowed it to reopen on Friday, she says …

SUDDENLY money has become very scarce for many people and hard choices are having to be made in a lot of households. Ciara (not her real name) is a full-time carer living in Ennis, while her partner has now been put out of work, leaving them very reliant on the Mid West Simon Food Bank. She has been through hard times quite often in the course of her life, often having accessed services from Simon in the past, and the charity have helped her with various issues. “I live with my partner who did work, and the Foodbank is very good since the work stopped. Now the work is cut back and he didn’t qualify for the €350 because he wasn’t working in March or February. He’s back on the JobSeekers now so it’s very handy with the Foodbank, it used to be once every two weeks but now it’s once a month. Things I don’t use I’d pass onto …