When the Biscuit Fund first started, it was just a small affair, a group of friends with a wish to help others in dire circumstances. Word began to get out about the work we were doing, and we were approached to see if we could help people they were advising. I remember when a busy day might have been five or six people needing help. Now the number of requests we get daily far exceeds the total we would have received for a week, a fortnight, maybe even a month. Times that by 5 and you have a disaster waiting to happen. We have had to make the tough decision to cut back the days we receive referrals to Mondays and Tuesdays only, allowing us some breathing space. We don’t get any Government funding, no large grants. We are reliant on the kind donations sent to us each month. Sometimes a gift is given to us of a substantial amount, or someone does some fundraising in our name to help. It is all gratefully received. The demands for help though far outweigh the donations we receive so we are having to ‘tighten our belt’ to coin a phrase. We can only hope the financial circumstances of us all will improve for the better because just now it is pretty awful.
We have seen lots of requests this week, from 79-year-old pensioners unable to heat their homes to more than one 19-year-old, street homeless and pregnant. Families struggling with the high cost of heating. One man is terrified of his landlord because he gets angry when his tenants don’t heat their homes, they would if they could afford to. So many people going days without food. Foodbanks too are feeling overwhelmed themselves as they struggle to prevent dependency on their services. It seems the problem of trying to stay afloat financially is being pushed onto those who shouldn’t be the ones to be ‘manning the lifeboats’. In times of crisis though, people like you and me, step up to help, we make that donation, we give to the food bank in the hopes that someone won’t be sat in the cold and the dark, without food to eat.
If you would like to help us, you can go here to donate, or maybe your business might like to make a regular donation to help us with the work that we do. There’s room in the lifeboat if we all budge up, or maybe we just get a second boat!