The Roehampton Community Box
Helping our community during the Cost-of-Living Crisis
In the last few months the Roehampton Community Box has seen an increase in the numbers signing up for their service and at the same time surplus stock levels are falling. The cost-of-living crisis is now a long-term issue and the situation is going to get desperate.
We have had a renewed call out from The Roehampton Community Box – our local social supermarket – that they are very short of food supplies despite getting three surplus food deliveries and buying in £600 worth of food weekly.
The Club is keen to support this vital service in which several Club Members are involved. The Roehampton Community Box (see below) was set up during the pandemic to provide local families with food but continues it’s work during the current cost-of-living-crisis with their local Social Supermarket.
Members are invited to donate much-needed items that can be left at the Security Gatehouse and will be collected by the Roehampton Community Box volunteers.
They have asked if we would do a collection for them and these are the items they need.
Vegetable oil
washing powder
washing up liquid,
basic hygiene items – toothpaste, shampoo, shower gel
Pasta
Rice
Cereal
Pasta sauce
Tinned Tuna
Corned beef
Because of increasing food cost /food price gone up by 50% , the social supermarket is only open 1.5 days a week and can therefore only support 200 families per week. If they were able to increase stock levels they could look at extending the opening hours and supporting more families.
So far in Roehampton, 24,300 boxes worth of food have been given out, equating to over 290,000 meals, for our local community – none of which would be possible without the generous donations from our local communities and the Roehampton Club.
Here is theJust Giving link in case anyone would prefer to give us money to buy items.
https://racketscubed.com/donate/
About the Roehampton Community Box
The Roehampton Community Box is run and managed by the charity, Rackets Cubed (charity number 1170744)
The charity was set up in 2016 with the vision to enhance the long-term achievement of children through nutrition, rackets sport and education. www.racketscubed.com
The Roehampton Community box was set up during the pandemic to provide local families with extra food.
The Roehampton Community Box opened in April 2020 in a local primary school where we handed out boxes of food- Initially we delivered and distributed the boxes via local primary schools and nurseries.
In June 2021 we moved to 166 Roehampton Lane.
We are open two days a week and we offer a selection of fresh, chilled, frozen and store cupboard food as well as toiletries, cleaning products and pet food.
To date we have handed out over 21,000 boxes which equates to approximately 250,000 meals!
In May 2022 we opened our social supermarket. The idea stemmed from wanting to give our families a choice in what they took home instead of just handing them a ready-made box. This has proved to be very popular with our families and since we changed to the shop model we have helped over 500 families and we are currently supporting 170+ families from around Roehampton area on a weekly basis.
We operate a self-referral system, but you must live within the SW15 postcode area. To help us manage stock levels everyone signs up for a one-hour timeslot. We ask for a voluntary contribution of £4, but for that contribution each customer gets approximately £35 of groceries. Not everyone pays the contribution and we do not turn anyone away. We have restricted the funds from this contribution to be spent on food items requested by our families that are not donated from elsewhere.
