Thanks to the generous customers supporting our national food drive

A big thank you to all our generous customers and colleagues across the country who are getting behind our month-long Fight Hunger Create Change food drive.

Shaheen Memon from our Leicester Abbey Lane store is pictured at one of the collection points you'll find in over 380 of our larger stores. They're permanent collection points, but throughout May and June we're stepping up our efforts to collect donations of food and hygiene essentials for local food banks as part of our partnership with FareShare and The Trussell Trust.

We've invested £25 million over the last three years to support their vital work in local communities.

The collection drive is part of our ongoing support to help the charities meet the increased pressures they face.

Between 1 April 2020 and 31 March 2021, a record 2.5 million emergency food parcels were given to people in crisis by food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network – a 33% increase in need on the previous year – with almost a million of these parcels going to children.

Over 278,000 meals were donated throughout our month-long food drive in July last year, as customers and colleagues responded positively to new signposting in store, which indicated the items most needed by their local food bank.

Our community champions across the country work closely with their local food bank and other food-related good causes, arranging the collection of customers' donations, securing grants from the Asda Foundation to support their work, and supporting school breakfast clubs and holiday clubs.

Here's a selection of what they're doing to support the campaign:

Thank you to customers at our South Shields store who continue to donate food and essential items to Hope Food Bank:

Here's our Longwell Green store's community champion Susan Grant with Pete from East Bristol Foodbank with their latest trolley of supplies:

Our Biggleswade store's community champion Jaimie Young helped Biggleswade food bank secure a grant from the Asda Foundation which provided more than 400 tins of food:

Generous customers at our Milton Keynes store have been getting behind our collection drive:

The store's community champion Suzanna Thorn said: "With a huge thank you to visitors to our Milton Keynes store we have already emptied nine trolleys and they are getting refilled very quickly."

Here's our St Helens store's community champion Gaynor Winstanley, with a donation of £600 worth of groceries for Sutton Community Project to support local people in Sutton. The donation was paid for with a grant from the Asda Foundation.

Our Isle of Wight store's community champion Clare Jones says donating to the Isle of Wight Food Bank so it can help local families is always a great feeling:

The latest donation was items specifically asked for by the food bank – cooking oil, gravy, washing powder, longline milk and tinned vegetables. Clare said: "A big thanks to our customers and colleagues who also keep the donation points full."

These green heart vouchers are a new way to donate to the campaign. Customers now have the option to pick up a voucher on our community board and scan at the tills to donate £1 towards The Trussell Trust and FareShare.

Lauren Griffiths from our Aintree store, pictured above, is a big supporter of the initiative, and raised £81 for the charities on Saturday by letting customers know about the vouchers.

Jo Warner, Asda’s Senior Director for Community, says the impact of the pandemic means this month's collection drive is important to many families.

She said: “As the impact of the pandemic continues to be felt in communities across the UK, families are struggling to access basic items like food and hygiene products. Our stores have permanent collection points year-round, but over the next month our aim is to boost the number of donations as we support our charity partners managing an increased need for emergency food parcels.

“I’m always overwhelmed by the generosity of our customers and colleagues, and I wanted to thank them for continuing to support our Fight Hunger Create Change programme. It’s making a real difference to the families in their local communities, both in terms of providing much needed emergency support as well as longer term help through our funding of trained advisors on the ground helping people out of the situation they find themselves in.”

As part of the Fight Hunger Create Change partnership, we've been able to support more than one million people over the last three years by providing fresh food and access to support services to help people in crisis get out of the situation they find themselves in.

Through the £25 million donation we've made to our charity partners, £5.7 million has been granted to food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network to provide services such as finance and debt advice.

Since 2018, our support has enabled 100 million meals to be donated to people in crisis through building more capacity for their partner charities, donations from our depots and stores, and Covid-19 support to get more food to people during the pandemic.

Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said: “So many people are struggling to put food on the table right now as the pandemic continues to affect many people’s lives. We would like to thank our partners Asda for creating this food drive which will help thousands of families facing crisis. We are always staggered by the generosity of the public which always rallies to support people in need. Everyone should be able to afford the essentials – that’s why we’re working with Asda to create a hunger free future without the need for food banks.”