Kate Curtis
Appearances
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Hi, I'm Kate Curtis. I'm Loveworks Chief Charity Officer.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
These are all coming from the Carrington School in Redhill, so they look like they've done a big collection for us yesterday, and we were very delighted to get a message from them yesterday to say that they were bringing all these donations this morning, and they've turned up with a vanload of food and children, which is excellent.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, we have a list of what we need, essential items for the food bank. So in here we've got jars of pasta sauce, there's tins of fruit, tins of potatoes, cereals, cannelloni beans in here, meat.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
casseroles there's a tin of beef curry irish stew and corned beef so all of these will be sorted and check they're all in date and then we'll be ready to go on our shelves and be packed to put into food parcels and a lot of this is really useful stuff isn't it i'm just having a look down here we've got biscuits and we've got cereal also we've got some other things as well which aren't food that you take to some toiletries
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, we don't ask for toiletries. Most of those are donated to us by the Hygiene Bank, which are a national charity. But if people have got toiletries that, again, has to be unopened, then we'll happily take it. That's a big lot of peanut butter here today, which we don't normally get. But that's sometimes a nice change from the jam and marmalade that we usually hand out.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
I mean, if we're buying it ourselves with money that's been donated to us, we tend to go for the budget brands, but it's nice that we get a real mixture.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Really impressive, yeah. I mean, our Carrington School, they're really good contributors. We often get donations from them, but this looks a fantastic one here.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
we do is get our Saturday team of Duke of Edinburgh volunteers go through and sort everything by date so we know the shorter date stuff so 2024 we need to sort and get out quickly and you'll see we've got some 2028 here and that will be a lower priority and we'll hand that out in due course.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
I mean, we try and think about meals, so it's sort of having some carbohydrate, like potato, pasta, rice, something protein, so that could be a vegetarian dish or it could be chicken curry, chili con carne, beef casseroles, and then vegetables to go with that, so tinned carrots, peas. We also give out some fresh food as well to try and help support that.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
And then there's treats as well, so there's some fresh fruit, there's tinned fruit.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
there's rice pudding custard biscuits and then we always have some extras which are things that people we do things that we don't ask for but people donate donate so it's things like packets of crisps chocolates you see the shelf there one of our volunteers is out there's some squash juices and various different cooking things so anything that's donated will if it's not on our list we'll still go out as extras and give people a bit of a treat and get
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
them thinking a bit differently about cooking as well and what they can use.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Pasta we don't need we've got shelves above us that are full of pasta and we've got lots of baked beans so the two things we definitely don't need are our pasta or baked beans but most of the things on our list and we always have an updated list on our website so that anybody knows what we do need but I can tell you now meat we give out in the region of 900 tins of meat a month so what may look like a shelf that's fairly full the what's on our shelves now won't last as
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, so that will be gone in a week. So what looks like a lot of stock will go very quickly.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, we've always said it could be anybody, it could happen to anybody. And we've seen that probably even more so since the pandemic. I think most people were out of work prior to the pandemic. Now we have people working, we've got teachers, we've got nurses, we've got people who are just having a bit of a problem with maybe some large bills at the moment.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
And if you're living kind of just about to your means and something like a large car bill or a gentleman at the moment, he can't afford a coat and he's using us because he wants to buy a coat. And in fact, we are going to probably donate a coat to him anyway.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
But it's people who are just, you know, life's just given them a bad deal and other people whose lives are just fairly chaotic or they just can't get themselves out of debt. But it literally could be anybody.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, everybody has to be referred. And we do that for a number of reasons. Using a food bank is usually a symptom of something else. So it's important we're working with other professional services to help people move out of food poverty. The last thing we want is people just being stuck using a food bank or food being given to people that don't need it. So everybody's referred.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
It could be a school, a doctor's surgery, a housing association, systems advice, the council. I mean, we've got a list probably of about 50 different referral agencies. So it's very easy for anyone to get a referral if they need it. But we do want to make sure that it's just checked and that we're supporting people in every way that they need to be supported.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Yeah, and that's something that Loveworks are really focused on is how we help people move out of food poverty. So we work with the referral agencies and we have a support worker at every food bank to try and understand and listen to why people are coming to us.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
And sometimes, for example, someone might have been referred from a school and they've come to the food bank and actually the discussion with our support worker, we find out that actually they've got a real debt problem and we can refer them to signpost them onto a debt agency or they're struggling with domestic abuse and we can signpost them onto East Surrey Domestic Abuse.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
So we try and do more than just hand them food.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
think it's making people aware of who we are and what we do and also understanding that actually there is a massive need and people may think that living in Reigate and the local area it's fairly affluent but we can tell you the numbers.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Massive and not just pockets I can tell you you would be surprised by the roads that we either deliver to or people come to our food banks from it literally is right across the whole of Reigate and the local area and also that we really need donations of food it's really important that people look at our list and see what we need so
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Though it's nice to have some extras, we need to make sure that people are donating the basics so we can give people what they need each week.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
We've got two allotments and we grow fresh vegetables that we bring to the food bank from parsnips and Brussels sprouts. So if people want to volunteer at the allotment, that's great. Help digging and weeding and watering and planting.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
Loveworks.org.uk is the website.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
We need funds in order to help run the organisation and also to buy food that isn't donated. So please think of us when you're doing any fundraising. If you want to run Rygate, if you're doing any sort of individual fundraising or your company can do anything where you can...
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
either donate food or money then we'd really appreciate it we've got a number of events coming up this year which will all be on our website so as much as anybody could support us we rely on the local community for everything so anything anyone can do to help would be really appreciated
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
I've done it every year since it first began.
The Planet Reigate Podcast
52: The LoveWorks food charity, the world-famous local artist who etched a view that you know so well… and more
I tend to pace myself really right from the start. I find that works best for me. Basically, it's just finding a pace that you're comfortable with.