Bournemouth and District Junior Lawyers Division members Kate Brooks, Clare Lawson, Theresa Hancock, Marie Rowe-Cousins, Matt Lewis, Bryan Scant and Dan Gardner
Aspiring young lawyers across Bournemouth and Poole are to dig deep in the New Year to help put food on the tables of some of the neediest residents across the area.
The Bournemouth and District Junior Lawyers Division is co-ordinating a 12-month long campaign to ensure the shelves of the Bournemouth and Poole food banks groan under the weight of donations all year round.
Chairman of Bournemouth JLD Clare Lawson said that the committee was calling on member firms to take part in the campaign after learning that the food banks experienced surges in donations around Christmas and Harvest, but were less busy the remainder of the year – even though demand remained high.
She said: “The idea is that the food banks receive a steady supply of donations, rather than being overwhelmed at Christmas and Harvest and forgotten for the rest of the year.
“So many people already donate to the food banks, so we thought this would be a really good way of ensuring they received regular donations throughout the year.
“The idea of this project is simply to co-ordinate regular donations and to make donating to the food banks as easy as possible.”
The year-long initiative will see lawyers at a different firm in Bournemouth or Poole donate food products to the food banks each month, with larger firms responsible for the leaner months during the year and smaller firms taking on the Christmas and Harvest periods.
So far eight firms have signed up for the initiative, but the team remain confident that they will be able to fill the remainder of the year.
In the last year alone the Bournemouth Foodbank has helped 6,600 people in need after receiving more than 19 tonnes of food products from the public.
