Every morning at the crack of dawn volunteers are busy making a packing lunches to ensure no child goes hungry during the long summer holidays.
Operation Bolton Lunches is once again underway to help struggling families while schools are shut during the long break.
Bolton charity Urban Outreach launched the initiative 10 years to help families whose children are on free school meals. In Bolton 12,500 children qualify for free school meals.
Every morning during the school summer holidays, volunteers put together a lunch pack before delivering boxes to sites across Bolton, including churches, community centres and libraries.
Volunteers include Ethan Matthews, 7, who had help make and stickered 827 ham sandwiches for charity.
Along with his mother and other Urban Outreach volunteers, Ethan had been prepping free lunches for underserved children since 6:45 AM on a day this week
Since the scheme started, volunteers have seen demand increase.
Laura Bagley, food team Leader, said: “In the past few years, we’re seeing an increase of children coming in.
“This year has a similar number to the last, maybe a bit less.”
She added: “When we start, we don’t know what the demand will be or whether our funding will cover it.
“We have to buy everything in advance and trust that the money will hold.”
In the first eight days of this summer’s appeal, the charity has made almost 25,000 lunches.
Volunteers gathered at 6:30 AM, ready to start the huge operation in The Haulgh.
Despite the early hour, they worked cheerfully packing bag lunches.
Volunteer Oliver Stainthorpe, 27, said: “I think the young people of Bolton deserve to eat food that’s good for them and shouldn’t be deprived of it because they’re out of school.
“I get up every morning to do this on a Wednesday and so many others do it as well because they have a fundamental belief that it’s right.
“It doesn’t matter how tired I get, other people are more tired.”
Cath Fox packed cereal bars and folded bags.
When asked why she does this, she said: “I’ve been volunteering with Urban Outreach since it began.
“It’s love in action.”
Laura praised Bolton Lunches’ “amazing” volunteers, but also said the appeal receives great support from businesses.
She said: “Warburtons donated the bread rolls for the summer and Seddon’s does our delivery run.”
Urban Outreach volunteers also cook with the children.
Maisie Yeoh, a food team project worker, runs cooking sessions with founder Dave Bagley.
She said: “A lot of their families don’t cook at home with them for different reasons.
“Often parents don’t have time or think they need to wait until young kids are they’re much older.
“Being in a kitchen with kids is a bit stressful, but fun. We really enjoy getting the young ones involved.”
Urban Outreach has expanded into a Bolton institution in its 34 years.
Laura said: “When the charity was set up, it was a lot smaller.
“I don’t think anybody would have dreamt of it being the size organisation that it is now.”
The need for its services has increased.
She added: “The demand we’ve seen since the pandemic has been ridiculous in some ways, but we were in a really good position to step up.
“Before the pandemic, we were feeding around 200 households a week. In the first week, we went to delivering parcels to 1,200.
“It was massive and we really didn’t have time to think about it.”
Laura said: “Many of our elderly volunteers had to isolate.”
But, new people stepped up to help.
She said: “We got a wave of volunteers were working from home or had been furloughed.
"They were different to those we had before.”
Laura said: “Only in the last year we’ve sort of slowed down a little bit. I think everything’s been in crisis-mode.
“Now we’ve managed to put some good tools in place to expand our service without us being extremely tired.
“Our food hub used to be open to the public six days a week, we’re now open three days.”
“That means our staff can have regular breaks and use the time to sort things out. It makes our work more efficient.”
She added: “Over the past few years, lots of programmes have been cut, which is detrimental to various people.
“It will take time to put them back in place.
“On the other hand, people may not know where to ask for help.
“Or wait until their circumstances are worse and it takes longer to address their issues.
“The Bolton sector work incredibly hard to fill in gaps.
“But at the end of the day, we can only do what we do if we’re funded to do it.”
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