We have remained busy through the winter season and have broken the 100,000 meal mark in terms of food production since inception. 81,000 meals were produced in 2017 of which 24,000 were curry and 57,000 were casseroles. This was a fourfold increase on our first year’s production in 2016
In December, we delivered over 22,000 meals to people in need in cities as far apart as Aberdeen, Hull, Preston, London, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Merseyside and Southampton. The warehouse is now stacked with pallets of food and we are distributing our meals to a variety of charities around the country. Following the traditional generosity around Christmas, it seems to us appropriate in January and February to continue distributing our delicious and warming meals to those who remain hungry and often cold.
We are now in review phase looking at what can we do better this year. We know that many people want to donate actual birds and we were disappointed last season that our wholesaling idea did not quite come to fruition due to auditing and traceability issues. However, we have new ideas on this score based around funding the production of diced meat by game processors and donating it directly to charities that are able to accept chilled meat and cook it for larger groups. Tim Maddams will be producing a range of simple menus for those chefs to ensure that those in need receive something truly delicious. We will let you know as soon as we have worked out the details.
We have been well featured on the BBC TV and Radio, widely reported in the shooting press and local press and we were mentioned in the editorial for The Field recently (which is featured in this newsletter). We have received the support of all the shooting organisations and we are looking to go more heavily online and into social media in the coming months to continue to spread the word about the charity through different means of communication.
We have a number of events in the near future with more planned further into the year. Tim Maddams and I were at a Game Dinner at The Packhorse Inn in South Moulton on 7th February (many thanks to Philip Turner and Chestnut Inns) and a larger dinner at Braxted Park takes place on the 8th February (many thanks to Duncan and Nicky Clark). We will also be speaking at the GWCT Game 2018 event on 1st March as well as providing the participants our casseroles and curry for lunch.
A huge thank you to all our individual and corporate supporters and also our accredited shoots for raising money through the season from your guns. We cannot wait to see what the end of the season brings us – cheques are already starting to arrive and with each one we can increase our next production run.
A big personal thank you to Andrew Christie-Miller, our first Chairman, who has stepped down after two years guiding the fledgling charity and we thank him for his wise council and calmness, especially through some of the more exciting media moments of the summer! Belinda Williams has also moved on following unexpectedly high demands on her time from her company Yorkshire Provender, but in her brief tenure with us she was able to help us hugely regarding future retail prospects and we are incredibly grateful to her and her offer to remain as an advisor.
On the plus side, we are delighted to welcome Mike Vaughton as a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer. Mike is a Chief Financial Officer in the NHS and is more than used to running budgets significantly larger and more challenging than ours. He has already revised many aspects of how we operate and we are most grateful for his expertise. We are also delighted that Ed Farquhar and Duncan Clark have very kindly agreed to join the board of Trustees. Both Ed and Duncan have already contributed massively to the charity and will be a significant contributors to our future.
If you haven’t already signed up, our Individual and Corporate Supporter schemes are still available – please see How You Can Help for more details.