Friday 5th July – From time to time over the past year I’ve been in touch with Janet Ashworth, the Community Champion at Accrington’s TESCO store, but I’d never met her till last week when I opened the Shopmobility in the Arndale Centre. She invited me on an official visit to the store, particularly in connection with their Food Bank project. I arrived with my Attendant Jayne at 1 p.m. and was introduced to the General Manager, Richard. Jayne and I were then taken for lunch in the staff restaurant where a lovely ham salad had been prepared for us. We were able to chat to Janet and find out a lot about her role. Although TESCO has a Community Champion at each of its major stores throughout the country, Janet is the only one who works full-time. She does a lot of outreach into the community, for example into schools. She goes to Huncoat Primary School once a week and makes them toast for breakfast. At the other end of the age range she goes weekly to Friar Court sheltered accommodation at the bottom of Burnley Road. Janet is really passionate about her job and is strongly supported by her Manager. She gave us a tour of the store and then we went to the Food Bank collection point at the top of the travelator. As customers came in we gave them a leaflet and encouraged them to donate a grocery item to the Food Bank on their way out. These days many people find themselves in poverty due to losing their job, etc. and have to rely on Food Banks. At TESCO dry goods, e.g. packets of cereals, tins of soup, etc. are donated in-store and taken to a central depot for distribution. Janet said older people are often the most generous in donating items. But two young Asian women with very young children donated a number of grocery items while we were there. We couldn’t imagine that they were on a high family income but they had wanted to give to people who were in greater need than themselves. Janet said that stores in more affluent areas don’t do as well with their Food Bank collections. She thought it was because people in those areas haven’t actually seen real poverty for themselves and so don’t appreciate the situation some families are in. At the end of our visit Janet said she wanted to give me a present. She said she supposed I was normally given flowers when I visited places so said she wanted to be different. The package was rather a strange shape and she asked me to open it there and then. There were 3 x 12 packs of Walkers Plain Crisps as she’d heard I was addicted to these! I was about to blame Councillor Peter Britcliffe as he’d spoken about this on my Mayor-Making Day but Janet said it was former Mayor Colette McCormack who’d told her about this! Those 36 bags of crisps should last me a while but I’ll eat at least one a day! I haven’t a sweet tooth at all and could go all year without eating cakes or biscuits but I really find it a hardship to do without crisps! Perhaps that explains why I’m 3 stone overweight! It can’t just be my age! Anyway, it was really good to meet Janet and I hope we can help each other in our community work during the year! Got home to find Murray playing his semi-final, which he won! Can he win the Final this time and be the first Brit since Fred Perry to hold the title? Go for it, Andy!
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 23:36:23 +0000
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