Wonderful acts of community kindness: Mosque & catering company provide food parcels & meals for Wykham Park students

A Banbury mosque and a Hook Norton catering company have reached out to a local
secondary academy to provide bags of donated food or freshly prepared frozen meals to the families of students.

Each week volunteers at the Park Road Mosque fill 10 large bags with a range of items from Tesco, Morrisons, Waitrose and Hello Fresh. They range from kitchen cupboard staples such as bread, pasta and rice to fresh fruit and vegetables, tinned or dried food.

The bags are then handed to members of Wykham Park Academy’s welfare and nurture
team who distribute them to the 20 families who would benefit most from them. Each family has received a bag on a fortnightly basis since January.
In addition to the generosity of Park Road Mosque, Thomas Franks, an international catering company in Hook Norton, has also recently reached out to Wykham Park via the Feeding Communities initiative. The food company has offered to provide freshly prepared meals that they freeze to the school’s nurture team. These will then be handed out to the 20 most in need families.

Wykham Park staff: Katie Lambert (Nurture Practitioner), Emma Daisley (Nurture Practitioner) & Elaine King (Welfare Manager), pictured with bags of donated food

Commenting on the kindness shown by Park Road Mosque and Thomas Franks, Justine
Williams, senior assistant principal at Wykham, told the Banbury Guardian: ‘’The food bags and frozen meals are both fantastic examples of community spirit and show how kindness can go a long way during this very difficult time.

”A lot of families are struggling and to have the food items means our most in need students are being fed and they have access to food that anyone can cook. It also means the pressure has eased off the families and so everything then becomes a little bit easier at home if parents or carers know they are not struggling to feed the children in their care.’’