The Olive Branch have recently moved into a new home and are also marking 20 years of service.
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00:00We're celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. It was set up really just out of a desire to meet
00:07people's need where, at their place of need where we meet them. Originally set up as a group working
00:15in one of the local churches providing a meal for homeless people. That's changed quite a lot
00:21over time now and we're now known primarily for our work as a food bank but we see that very much
00:28as just one part of what we do. We are a food bank and a support centre for people so we're open
00:36in the day through the week during business hours for people to come to us with either a referral
00:42for a food parcel or to come and get help and advice in the situation they find themselves in.
00:48We've grown from starting off just as an evening once a week providing a meal
00:57in a church to then becoming a charity and starting to employ staff, becoming a daytime
01:06based support centre and then the food bank side of what we do actually grew sort of organically
01:12just that was one of the needs that people had when they were coming to us and it started as a
01:17few tins of beans on a shelf. It's now a food bank that's working its way through about 10 to
01:2412,000 items of food every month so quite a scaling up. Lancaster's frequently seen as sort
01:30of the affluent city with two universities and all of that and it is but it's also
01:39you've got the housing estates where there are people really struggling, you've got the areas
01:46over in Skirton and Rylands and on the ridge and the marsh and all those kind of there's
01:50plenty of places. Lancaster being that sort of everybody knows how small Lancaster is both in
01:56literally and in the way it feels you can kind of walk down one street with its
02:01big Georgian townhouses and you pop through a little alleyway and you're into areas where
02:06people are really really struggling just to make those choices between keeping the heating on
02:11and feeding their kids or paying their bills or paying their council tax so that's
02:18again why it's really important that we're able to get back to somewhere where people can
02:22come to us, can make those human connections, can come somewhere where they feel valued, loved, cared
02:28for, feel that there are people whether that's us and our volunteers willing to take the time to sit
02:34with them to come here and do this but also our donors out there. The fact that people
02:42are people who get support from us are often just blown away, people leave here in tears at the fact
02:47that a random stranger that they never knew will never know was willing to put some
02:54some tins in a collection point in their local supermarket or whatever or come and drop
03:02food to us and it really does make that massive difference to our guests to
03:09know that they're not alone in what they're dealing with.