Foodbank’s bounty benefits those by the beach.

The Beachside Communicare Food Pantry is the charity arm of Beachside Church, Pottsville which operates under the leadership of Pastors Alan & Vanie Pillay and is coordinated weekly by Margaret Kennedy and her wonderful team of volunteers.

“Due to the increase of financial hardship in our community, we empathised and decided that we should do something on an ongoing basis to alleviate this problem.” says Alan.

Our vision is to:

  • engage actively in our community through regular food distribution
  • help alleviate poverty
  • support those experiencing social isolation.

The pantry serves mainly:

  • disadvantaged families (seniors, single parents, pensioners, aged, job seekers, disabled people)
  • people who might be in temporary crisis – out of work or ill of health
  • individuals facing social isolation who, when participating, have an opportunity to relax and interact with members of the community over a cup of tea and light refreshments and engage with a chaplain who enquires on their wellbeing, if required.

Approx 12-14 volunteers gather at 8:30 am and are assigned their duties, including providing refreshments, receiving newly delivered stock, bread, vegetables, and unpacking stock form storage cupboards.

Pantry patrons arrive as early as 8:30am and while waiting to be signed in, are offered tea, coffee and light refreshments and during this time interact with others. When the pantry is set up, the patrons are able to select their own groceries and free food items and pay for their purchases as they leave the room.

The operation of the Pantry is now into its 6 year and has enjoyed steady success, making a real difference for our organisation’s objectives, as well as for the disadvantaged people in the local community.

We have collaborated with our own members and many organisations over this period in ensuring that we can achieve our desired outcomes of providing poverty relief by way of food distribution.

On a closing note we owe our heartfelt gratitude to wonderful team at Foodbank who are genuinely interested in the address social disadvantage. The ‘family’ at Foodbank are always a pleasure to deal with, polite, courteous and helpful at all times and no doubt they contribute intensively to our and other agencies successful operations and existence.