Sore arms, infinite crates, and exploding rice packets… 🍚

The EcoSend team are no strangers to the Bow food-bank, having volunteered there now since 2023(!).

It’s always a delightful, albeit somewhat exhausting, experience to return for a volunteer shift with the Bow team.

We’ve got to know Andy and his team pretty well over the years, who are always incredibly welcoming. Not to mention forgiving for our collective clumsiness and all too regular mistakes! 😊

And so for our Q1 volunteer day, we were delighted to put in a full-shift last Wednesday at the Bow food-bank.

The Morning Shift

We arrived promptly for our morning shift, which involved unpacking excess ‘HelloFresh‘ deliveries, which had been kindly donated via Bow’s partner, The Felix Project.

It was kind of HelloFresh to offer the excess food, which included some lovely rice and egg noodles, as well as fresh onions. Such offerings from companies are invaluable for the food-bank’s residents in-need.

Without donations like these, Bow food-bank would be required to purchase supplies from their own budget in order to meet residents’ needs for the day.

And some of the HelloFresh condiments will hopefully be re-packaged for residents too, later down the line.

It was all going very smoothly, until James managed to scatter the entire contents of a torn rice package all over the floor… 🥴

Stomachs Rumble!

Having wrapped up the morning preparations for guests, as well as unloaded a van-load of donations from the local Whitechapel Sainsbury’s, we headed off, somewhat ravenous for lunch.

We made full use of the generous 1 hour lunch break, starting off with falafel at the unassuming but incredibly delicious, Nur Falafel 🥙

Andy’s choice recommendation, and nearly 500 five star reviews on Google lived up 100% to the hype!

Hearty and fresh falafel boxes or wraps, not much more expensive than a Starbucks Matcha..!

James and I still had room for dessert however, so we couldn’t help but make a quick pit-stop on the way back at the one and only G. Kelly pie shop 🥧

Despite the hearty falafel boxes just consumed, we managed to also polish-off sizeable Apple Crumble and ice-cream 😋

The Afternoon Shift

After that, we waddled back for our afternoon shift 🐷

Expecting a laid-back wind-down to the day, we were in for a big surprise!

Welcoming us back at the food-bank was a truck filled with 104 boxes of donations from the Bloomberg <> Felix Project collaboration.

Sorting this generous delivery involved; hauling each box from the van into the lift, hauling the boxes from the lift into the main hall, unpacking each box, sorting the contents into individual boxes, hauling the new boxes into storage, and finally… breaking down each box for recycling 😅

This was serious hard labour! Which at one point left James and I totally crumpled on the floor…

Who needs gym when you have lifting crates?! 💪

Wrapping-up, and Pub!

Mercifully, 6pm did eventually roll around, and we gladly finished off the final tasks of the shift.

To reward ourselves, a quick trip to the pub! Before rounding off the day and heading home in the typical London drizzle ☔

A big thank you as always to Andy and his team, as well as the other volunteers, for being so welcoming and patient with us 🫶

And a thank you as well to the generous donations from HelloFresh and Bloomberg 💚