Top professional jockeys, Leighton Aspell, Jamie Moore and Joshua Moore visited the Community Food Bank at St Saviours Sunbury on Monday 9 December ahead of the Ladbrokes Christmas Festival.

The jockeys helped the volunteers complete jobs at the Food Bank. This included making up food parcels for families that had been referred to St Saviours, processing food donations that had been delivered and helped to sort out Christmas presents for an upcoming Christmas event.

Grand National winning jockey, Leighton Aspell helped with processing donated food:

“The processing station (is) where all the dates are checked. You write the date on top and you stick to it going from the years 2020, 21, 22, 23 and then all this stuff goes into the Food Bank supermarket and it goes into parcels for people, for families or couples. Then people come in the afternoon, take the parcel that’s been put together with some great food, done by all this great work by all these volunteers here today.”

He added regarding his thoughts on the morning:

“I’m very impressed but it is surprising, without knowing about it you hear the numbers that are talked about here, you just don’t know the amount of families that require all this help on a weekly basis and it’s a bit frightening but it’s great to see all this surplus food from the local supermarkets is being put to good use.”

Jamie Moore, who predominately helped with making up food parcels said:

“Me and Leighton, we came in here and I provided a family of four for the week with all their food. Breakfast, lunches, dinners and all their toiletries and hopefully got it all right for them for the week. 

“I’ve got children myself and so I sort of know how much you do need. It is a good deal and this charity is obviously doing immense work to help these families out.”

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Joshua Moore, who helped to sort out Christmas presents, said:

“Today we’ve been organising presents that families can buy at Christmas for £2, they’re organised into boxes and could be worth up to £50, that people have donated and we’ve just been organising them into age and boy, girl genre to see suitable gifts for the age group and the children that will be wanting gifts at Christmas.”

About the morning he added:

“It’s hugely eye-opening. I cannot believe how much is going on here, how much food people do donate and how much is needed. It’s really eye opening and quite scary how much food is needed on a daily basis, not just as a one-off kind of thing and the big difference they are making to families at Christmas.

“There’re kids that are actually going to enjoy Christmas because they are going to get gifts when they probably wouldn’t be able to otherwise.”

Claire Hopkins, Social Transformation Pastor & Food Bank Manager at St Saviours, said:

“We are we are a Food Bank that reaches out to local people, connecting using food that’s been donated as well as local surplus food from supermarkets and bridging the gap between food waste and food poverty locally and helping transform our area so that nobody goes to bed hungry in Sunbury.

She added on the jockeys that attend St Saviours:

“It’s been fantastic to have the guys and just thank you for coming and thank you for your time. They’ve been epic in being involved. They’ve just rolled their sleeves up, stepped in and helped with the team.

“They’ve helped make some food parcels for a couple of the families that have been referred in today. They’ve helped process all of our donations that have come through the door, helped move some of our surplus food around and we’ve also got an amazing Christmas event coming up in a few weeks and just been a part of that and just making sure that the presents have been sorted and basically mucked in wherever they could.”