Last updated at 17:28, Wednesday, 19 December 2012

GENEROUS customers donated 7,000 meals in just two days during an appeal to help families facing a hunger crisis this Christmas.

Tesco Extra, in Hindpool Road, Barrow, took part in the national Help Feed People in Need appeal over the weekend of December 1 and 2.

The event was run alongside food bank charity The Trussell Trust, and the meals will be donated to the Barrow Foodbank in Abbey Road.

Store manager David McMunn said shoppers in Barrow had shown extraordinary generosity.

He said: “It is the first time we have done this so we are only able to compare how generous shoppers have been with the national figures. If you look at them as a percentage of the population Barrow has been one of the stores that has collected the most.

“It is a small town with three big supermarkets and the amount we have collected is phenomenal.”

Ann Mills, project manager of Barrow Foodbank, said the continued partnership with Tesco would help give the organisation a sustainable future.

She said: “We are not just here for Christmas, we are here all year. We have just opened a distribution centre in Ulverston and are opening one in Millom as well.”

Nationally, the appeal collected two million meals, and the store that donated the most meals in the UK was Tesco Extra in Allerton Road, Liverpool, which collected 10,000 meals.

The foodbank offers free food to people who are facing a hunger emergency.

Heartbreaking cases of poverty have emerged recently, including a woman who walked 20 miles from Ulverston to Barrow and back to use the foodbank.

The Evening Mail has learned that a woman in Windermere is planning to set up a foodbank in the town, and has enlisted the support of Westmorland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron.

Mr Farron said: “When I heard about the plan for a foodbank in Windermere I instantly offered whatever help I could.”

First published at 16:08, Wednesday, 19 December 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk