FOODBANKS ALL OVER THE UK ARE CLOSING THEIR DOORS. NOT FIRST BASE. WE ARE GEARING FOR A 500% INCREASE. YOU CAN HELP OUT IN SEVERAL AREAS. PLEASE READ AND PLEASE SHARE.

So First Base faced some pretty daunting challenges on Monday morning. The wall to wall rolling news was as grim as the weather. Here is how things looked in a nutshell.

Food donations were falling off a cliff – we rely on receiving £45,000 a year's of packets and tins.

Buying food in was not a viable option. At 11 a.m. The Tesco van pulled up at the back door. £500 worth of stuff ordered. £18 worth of stuff delivered.

And demand? Well, we didn't need a crystal ball to see demand was about to take off.

Money? Yeah. Right. We are not one of those animal charities with ten years of reseves in the bank.

So. Decision time. We could follow the majority of the country's foodbanks and close our doors. Pen a note for the door. "Due to the Coronavirus......"

No way. To close the doors would have been against everything The First Base Agency has tried to stand for. Since 2003. 

OK then. Decision made. We weren't going to close. Time for the big question. How on earth could we go from 120 emergency food parcels a week to at least 600 emergency food parcels a week with no virtually no food donations? And no ability to buy food in? And not enough money to buy the food in even if we were able to buy it?

Well it is Wednesday morning now and I am pleased to be able to tell you we are pretty confident we have found a way.

Here is what we have been able to put in place.

Getting hold of enough of the packets and tins we usually rely on is clearly impossible. They won't be donated. They can't be bought. And even if they could be bought, we couldn't afford to buy enough of them.

So we have come up with a basic emergency parcel using stuff we will be able to lay our hands on.

First up. Broth. A go to favourite for Scotland in times of hardship. I checked out the supermarket shelves and with no great surprise I discovered the broth mix shelves had been stripped bare. So I called up the sales department at Whitworths, the company who make 'Great Scot' broth mix. Could they sell us some? They were kind of surprised, but they promised to do what they could. A couple of hours later they e mailed me. They had about a tonne of broth mix in stock and they were willing to sell it to us at a 20% discount. And deliver it for free. They could have profiteered. They didn't.

Respect.

My next step was to meet up with Anne Marie at Summerhill Community Centre. If Carlsberg were run a community centre...…! They are a great outfit. Every day of the week the place is buzzing with groups for young and old alike. Sadly all of these groups were closed down on Monday morning. Just like all groups. Everywhere.

Over the years Summerhill have invested heavily in their kitchen facilities. Now it is gleaming and state of the art. Crucially, they have a superbly motivated and competant team of volunteers who are well skilled in cooking large batches of food.

I asked if they might be able to start cooking up industrial quantities of broth for us. And they said yes. Why don't we start with 400 portions a week?

Progress, right? We had a tonne of broth mix and good people ready and willing to turn it into soup. Logistics? Plastic containers which are microwave ready and on the Bookers shelves for 9p a go. Tick. Procedure? Cook soup. Fill containers. Cool down and make ready for us to collect and take to the First Base freezers the next day. By hook or by crook, we are confident we will be able to buy the sacks of spuds, carrots, neeps and onions we will need to add to the the broth mix.

Next question. Did we have the required freezer capacity? No we didn't have the the required freezer capacity. So I called up Kevin Farish. Kevin has a Rolls Royce of a business selling electrical appliances right across Dumfries and Galloway. His man Murray told me they had been selling freezers like hot cakes all weekend. Well if people want to panic buy, they need somewhere to stow their panic purchases.

Did they have a couple of large chest freezers to sell us? They did. Huge ones. 430 litres each. They should have sold for £400 each. Kevin said the best he could do was £300 each. He could have profiteered. He didn't.

Respect.

They are due to be delivered at one this afternoon.

Another box ticked.

Next. Kerr at The Little Bakery in Dumfries. For years Kerr has been building his bakery business up on uncomplicated quality. His pies win all kinds of awards. If you are ever lucky enough to eat one, you will see why. We sat in his office. I laid our problems down on the table. I told him where we were up to on the soup front. I said it would be great if we could add two of his pies and three of his rolls to the two cartons of soup. And then we argued for the bast part of half an hour. I explained how we already spend £2000 a month on buying in food and some of this would need to head his way. He kept on telling me to piss off and asked me why he would even think of invoicing First Base in a time of crisis. In the end we agreed to disagree. This is the kind of guy Kerr is. He knows a bit about what a crisis looks like by the way – he was a volunteer fireman during the Lockerbie disaster.

After half an hour he promised us as many pies and rolls as we needed.

Respect

Tuesday morning and we had things in place to make a basic emergency parcel based on items manufactured locally out of simple, buyable ingredients.

Capacity. About 600 parcels a week's worth of capacity.

Promising.

Next up. How to get the food to the people who need the food? Right now, 50% of our parcels are collected from libraries across the 3400 square miles of territory we try to support. Do they have any freezers? No, they don't have any freezers. OK. Amazon. How much for a counter top freezer? About a hundred quid. I called up two councillors who picked up the phone straight away. If First Base buys up freezers and delivers them to libraries, could you guys guarantee to repay us at some stage? An answer is promised this morning. I am pretty sure the answer will be yes.

Which brings we to the part where First Base is asking for some help. We have already been contacted by lots of people who want to make themselves available. Now we want to start taking people up on these offers.

There are four ways you can help us out.

1. This one takes about five minutes. The Council is making money available to local charities who do anti poverty work. We are bidding for £12,000. The public makes the decision about who gets funded. The voting process is online. If you follow the link below, you can vote for us. Everyone who has voted for us tells me the process is quick and easy

CLICK HERE TO CAST YOUR VOTE FOR FIRST BASE

2. Money. Of course money. As demand for emergency food sky rockets over the coming weeks, there will be any number of unforeseen expenses. Having some cash reserves available can mean the difference between saying 'yes' and saying 'no'. Modest reserves meant we were able to buy in £1300 worth of broth mix and £600 worth of freezer capacity without having to waste vital time trying to raise funds. If you follow the link below, you will arrive at our online fundraising page. I hate to go all Tesco, but every bit really does help.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

3. Deliveries. As demand grows, we are going to need lots of help with getting our emergency parcels to the people who need them. We can make sure this is done safely for all concerned. Here is how it will work? A volunteer parks up outside our back door and opens the boot. We fill them up with parcels and hand them a list of addresses. Nobody gets within two meters of each other. Once the volunteer arrives at an address, they call the client and tell them their parcel will be left on the doorstep. Again, nobody needs to be within two metres of each other. If you are willing to offer your services to help get the parcels out, please either e mail me on markglenmill@aol.com or call me on 07770 443483. We cover an area from Kirkconnel to Dalbeattie and Castle Douglas to Langholm

4. Cooking. The volunteers at Summerhill have committed to make soup 2 days a week. There are three days available for more soup to be prepared should we need to help more than 200 people a week. And I am pretty sure we will need to help more than 200 people a week. Lots more. If you are a dab hand in the kitchen and minded to help out, then either e mail me on markglenmill@aol.com or call me on 07770 443483.

So. That pretty much does it. It is Wednesday morning and we are well on the way to having everything in place. The new regime goes live on Monday. With what we have in place already, we can already help a lot of people. If more and more people are willing to step up, either with money or with time, we will be able to help a whole bunch more people.

Can we manage 1000 emergency parcels a week? You know what, I reckon we possible can. With help. Your help. Here are the links again.

To vote for us, click below.

CLICK HERE TO CAST YOUR VOTE FOR FIRST BASE

To donate to us, click here.

THE FIRST BASE ONLINE FUNDRAISING PAGE

We are all about to live through a truly horrible time. We can either hide away and look to our Governent for everything. Or we can rally around and get stuck in. In my book, 'bottom up' is always more effective and efficient than 'top down'. 'Bottom up' means people like Anne Marie and Kerr and Kevin and the good folks at Whitworths. People who say 'sure, glad to help'. Decisions made quickly mean stuff can get done quickly.

So it's over to you. Please share this and help us out if you can.