St Peter & St Paul Rustington- Pantry

Pantry News May 2026:

Pantry:  

Your early church pantry went well this week. We have just received another delivery of frozen venison mince from The Country Food Trust. This is a wonderful initiative where deer that are culled in Sussex, as part of ecological land management, get processed and used to help charities with food poverty solutions.  Our pantry users will be delighted.  Our pantry volunteers met this week to review the feedback from our recent surveys at the church pantry and the Georgian Gardens pantry.  The meeting was followed by Dementia awareness training from Alzheimer's UK delivered to church volunteers who are pastoral visitors, people who go into care homes as well as pantry volunteers. If you are interested in seeing the slides from the pantry meeting, please let us know and we will email you a copy. If you would like to help us restock this week, we are short of milk, squash, cereals, jam/spreads and biscuits.  As always, thank you your wonderful support.

The Pantry Team

St. Peter and St. Paul's Pantry in Rustington Church Hall has created a safe and welcoming space where people in our community who are struggling to get by can top up their weekly food supplies.  On 6th October 2021, the Pantry opened its doors to the community with tables full of dry food; and is open every Wednesday (at different times).

The Pantry is supplied with food items provided by the generosity of the Church's parishioners. We are also proud to work with some fantastic partners - the Butcher & Deli in Rustington, COOK in Rustington, the Littlehampton Community Fridge, Sainsbury's in Littlehampton and Morrisons in Littlehampton - are all playing a vital role in supporting the Pantry. During the lockdown many of these food suppliers provided good quality food to local families receiving regular food donations at their front doors. Our local food suppliers welcome the launch of the Pantry because they are driven to support local people in need and at the same time reduce waste and disposal costs.

The root of our action is clearly the compassion that our Church has for local people who are struggling to feed themselves and their families because their incomes do not stretch far enough. At the Pantry anyone can come along and access good food with dignity and choice (no questions asked). We are hoping this provision gives people the means to stay afloat in tough times.

Since the opening of the Pantry, it has been well used. This shows that there are a significant number of people in our community who are experiencing food insecurity. No doubt the lockdown hit some families very hard but our Church's provision of a Pantry is a testament that we are exercising our Christian calling to help people in need.

We also expect the Pantry to be a place where relationships are built and not just a place where physical needs are met.