20 years ago, on March 19th, the foodbank Reichenbacher Tafel opend its doors for the first time.
It started with a handful guests and some donors of food. One donated car went every day to the supermarkets and bakeries to collected food from them. Sometimes the volunteers went with their private cars to the donors.
In those 20 years a lot of changes happened.
In 2003 the volunteers founded an association to save the foodbank. In 2005 the Reichenbacher Tafel moved to a new domicile, the “Haus der Vereine” because the rooms in the old one were to small.
Today we help 200 to 300 people a week, more than 50 donors give us the food to help. Our drivers go with two new refrigerate vehicles to collect this. In our rooms we have a cold room and a cooling rack because we have to secure the cool chain.
All this equipment was possible to buy because a lot of people donated money for this, for example the customer of Lidl – they donated the bottle deposit. Last year we could buy some hygienic aluminum tables and a new cabinet for work clothes.
Every week 200 to 300 people come to the foodbank to get bread, cake, vegetables, fruits and so on. The volunteers and we help gladly, but we want to stop our work immediately, if all people can life from their income.
A jubilee is time for saying Thanks to all the people, who helped to go this way. As first we thank the volunteers. Some of them worked, in the last year alone more than 1000 hours without payment. Our eldest volunteer will celebrate her 80th Birthday in the summer and she stays young by working with us.
Secondly we thank all our donors. If the supermarkets and bakeries don’t give the food to us, the tables stay empty. If there is no one, who donates money, the vehicles stand still and the guests cannot get help.
At the moment we look for drivers for our refrigerate vehicles. If you have a driver licence and you are able to drive such a car, you can call us: 03765 717893.
