Easter food parcels

Easter came, finding us exhausted and too tired to want to do anything. All last week was spent making up food parcels for poor families. We used the rest of the dried and tinned goods from Blythswood Trust and also a donation of tinned soup from a local church and anything else we could think of to make up boxes for families. Between 0900 and 1400 on both Thursday and Friday we had a constant stream of families calling at the "Secret Garden" to see if we had anything for them for Easter. (From 1500 every day Monday to Friday the street people come for their showers, to wash clothes and to relax a little.)

In each box we put rice, pasta, dried beans or lentils, cooking oil and other groceries, plus shampoo, soap and toothpaste and last but not least sweets and a couple of toys for the children. almost 150 families received boxes and in some cases told us that without them they would have had no food at all over Easter. In previous years we have been able to buy eggs for families to dye as is the tradition here and coffee as well as other goodies but with the current financial situation we had to make do with what had been donated. We wished we could have done more but we have to accept that, at the end of the day there's only so much we can do.