Christmas Distributions

Three distributions of food to charities took place in late December. The largest, which provided food to 146 charities in the South East of England, was held at Roudham Farm, East Harling. We are very grateful to the Jolly Family and Frederick Hiam Ltd for agreeing to host the distribution for the 14th year at Roudham. Simultaneously, two other distributions were held at Openshaw in Manchester, which supplied food to charities in the North West of England, and at the Buckingham family farm in Swafield.

Roudham Projects

115 of the charities supplied from the Roudham distribution are based in Norfolk and Suffolk. In total, the organisations supplied from Roudham Farm are caring for over 9,000 people. The projects supplied from Roudham include 19 women’s refuges. We received donations of toiletries from Unilever and Lush and this enabled us to provide welcome packs to these projects, as a small gift to the women and children who would be spending Christmas in the care of our colleagues in the refuges.

The distribution also supplied projects based in Cambridgeshire, Essex and Lincolnshire. The group who probably travelled furthest to collect from us were the East Coast Homelessness Outreach team from Louth in Lincolnshire. They planned to provide Christmas lunch to homeless people living under a flyover in their town.

Openshaw Distribution

We were very grateful to our colleagues at Emerge Fareshare, and especially those who oversaw our distribution of Christmas food to our charities in the North West of England. This year we provided support to 54 charities in the North West, 46 of them via Emerge FareShare.

Support from Farmers and Schools

The support of the farming community is essential to BEFA. It enables us to operate with very low overheads and consequently provide our food completely free of charge, something that is now unusual in the charity sector. The food donations and other support were key to our work in 2024.

We were also fortunate again last year to be supported by many schools who responded to our annual appeal by organising collections of sugar, tea, coffee and food. Other schools collected toiletries and winter clothing items such as hats and gloves.

2024 Summary

In 2024 BEFA worked with 226 charities who are supporting over 16,000 people. Our December food distributions provided the ingredients for over 19,000 festive meals together with tens of thousands of other winter meals.

In 2025 we will be celebrating the 40th anniversary of the work of BEFA and the generosity of its supporters and volunteers.