Pantry's 400th week supporting local families
The Lighthouse Pantry is our membership based food club. It was set up in December 2018 to help local families and individuals reduce their weekly food costs, and keep more money in their household to cover other bills or needs.
The idea behind the Pantry is to help people to reduce their weekly food costs which then allows some of that money to be spent on other household bills, such as rent and utility costs. Currently members are receiving around £25+ retail value of food in their food parcels.
This week, 21st – 25th September 2026 marks our 400th week of being open, and of serving and supporting local families in need.
Since we opened, the Pantry we has supported over 1,000 different families, who have attended 29,200 times, across 1,090 different Pantry sessions. That is a lot of people struggling with their household bills, and a lot of food that we have had to find. Typically we have to source over 1,500 items a week in order to keep the shelves stocked. Ths comes from donations and direct purchases.
We are encouraged that we have been able to sustain the work nearly 8 years, standing with people experiencing food poverty, or food insecurity, and helping them to cover their weekly household costs, but it is equally sad that the situation for families in not improving, and that the cost of living crisis is deepening.
When we look ahead to what is coming during the next 12 months it doesn’t look good, and we anticipate that even more families and individuals will be struggling to meet ever increasing bills, so if you are able to stand with us, to help us to support more people,we would appreciate this.
The Lighthouse Project is part of local charity Inspire Middleton which raises all its own funding through grants and donations. The help and support of groups and organisations is just the type of thing that we need – are you able to donate and invest in helping us tackling poverty and building a better community?
