VOLUNTEERS are helping ensure vulnerable residents in the borough’s northern parishes are receiving food deliveries.
Members of the Rotary Club of Maiden Erlegh have teamed up with Hare Hatch Sheeplands to get the packages to customers who can’t get to the popular farm shop during the coronavirus lockdown.
The volunteers are also working on the phones, taking orders and dealing with customer orders that come in via email in a bid to help the overburdened farm shop cope with the additional demand.
The shop has already expanded its opening hours to incorporate a special early morning session for single parents, as well as an hour for keyworkers such as NHS staff.
Andy Dicks said: “We have a lot of loyal, vulnerable customers, some in their 70s.
“We said to them that we’d look after them, take their orders and ensure it would be sent out.”
And what started off as a small, manageable enterprise for the small business soon became something bigger: “We had about 20 customers for the first couple of days, but they told their friends, who told their friends, and we had nearly 200 now,” Mr Dicks explained.
“We now have a local army of volunteers who are taking these orders to vulnerable people.
“The Rotary Club have been manning phones, taking telephone orders from people who can’t use the internet and doing some voluntary deliveries for us. It’s just become a massive thing.
“There’s a lot of local support. The people in Twyford, Wargrave, Woodley, they’ve all been tremendous. We had 300 offers of volunteer drivers in just one hour.”
It has been a busy time for the farm shop, which includes a butchers, a greengrocer, and plenty of local produce including beers.
“It’s been crazy,” Mr Dicks said.
But it is the volunteers that have been making a difference.
“They are literally saving lives,” he added. “They are fantastic. We take all reasonable precautions, and they just get on with it.
“The drivers are at the front end of it, taking food to the elderly and vulnerable, to people suffering from cancer.
“We’re determined to do whatever we’ve got to do to look after them as much as we can.”
The club has also taken a box of food to the Royal Berkshire Hospital to thank them for their dedication to patients.
A Rotary spokesperson said: “The RBH staff were really pleased to receive the donation from Hare Hatch Sheeplands; they were especially pleased to have fresh ready to eat fruit from the Farm Shop and appreciated biscuits.”
The club says it has continued in a collaborative approach, working with other local clubs, including Loddon Vale Rotary, to donate and supply stocks to the Woodley Food Bank on a weekly basis, with items sourced from Brakes UK, ASDA and Waitrose. Reading Maiden Erlegh has also supported new club Reading Thames Rotary with their appeal for the RBH Staff Wellbeing and Welfare Centre, where more than 200 members of NHS staff use the centre each day for some respite.
It has also helped Berkshire Women’s Aid, the Wycliffe Baptist Church and The Salvation Army.
Members have also volunteered, by joining the befriending outreach to elderly and isolated community members with the Reading Association for the Blind, Berkshire Vision and the Link Visiting Scheme.
For more details, or to offer support for the club’s Coronavirus Relief Effort, visit www.readingmaidenerlegh.org.
