In very hard times, the worst since the Second World War in fact, it's amazing to see how strong our resilience has been, the effort local residents and volunteers have pooled to come together in a such an awe-inspiring way this year has been truly inspiring. Throughout the year the Bernwode Bus has been helping to get food donations to Vineyard Food Bank amongst many other things to bring some lockdown cheer to residents. Over Christmas as well as helping Santa to visit children (and big kids too) across the Vale the Bernwode team working alongside George Newman & Darren from the George and Dragon,Quainton and Vineyard Foodbank in Aylesbury to see what they could do to help struggling families with providing a Christmas dinner food parcel.
The team needed to raise £2000 to feed 800 people on Christmas Day, but in a fantastic show of support from residents far and wide the appeal raised over £10k in just 4 weeks, as well as 1000 toys and over 200 crates of food! To add to this Avara Hatcheries, Quainton donated 200 chickens, an amazingly generous offer.
Cllr Paul Irwin said, "Thanks to your generosity we are donating £1500 to local Animal Charities to help them over Christmas. We have added more food for the Vineyard so that there is enough fresh food for a few days over the Christmas period. In January, we are planning to team up with the Clare Foundation to launch our pub take away scheme for the elderly and vulnerable people in our own area. We have enough money for at least 700 vouchers which is incredible.
That means you have helped us donate well over 2000 meals for people over a very difficult period. Thank you so much to all the business, residents, Buckinghamshire Council Area Board, Avara Foods, the George and Dragon and the Vineyard. But most of all thanks to all the volunteers that work in the background tireless organising the food collections, toys collections and distribution of all the Presents and last but not least the Bernie team Ashley, John, Steve, Karl, Lucy, Jo, Clive and Ben you really are amazing people.
We wish you all a Merry Xmas in weird times but one thing for sure is that the Christmas spirit is very much alive."
