Happy new year!

We're fully into 2026 now with January nearly through, here's a roundup of our latest news...

Food Warehouse and Krusty Loaf bakery come on board at the Fridge - Hooray for more food saved from landfill 🥳

Christmas community lunch finishes the year on a high! A wonderful roast with all the trimmings as well as a fun quiz hosted by the brill Pete Cook. Thank you to Nottingham Building Society for collecting christmas crackers for the event and for sending staff to help put on the day!

Grants awarded to our work by Paul Bassham, Norfolk Community Foundation Connecting Older People fund, Breckland Council Inspiring Communities fund and Lidl Community Fund.

Partnership working with Wellspring Food Cabin, Mid Norfolk Food Bank, Dereham Aid Centre and the Salvation Army as staff meet regularly at their Food Forum to discuss what help is available to residents in an aim to increase accessibility and decrease duplication. Also we teamed up on Christmas Eve and New Years Eve and brought all surplus food together under one roof to make a one-stop-FREE-shop at Wellspring Church for residents to come and have as much as they could make use of! An amazing 74 crates of food were given away free that were destined for the bin.

Christmas Toy Appeal in partnership with Lidl - what a fantastic success! Through this project we were able to support families who were struggling to afford presents for their kids this year.

54 toys were donated, meaning 17 households were supported, that's 34 children blessed!

We had a "Thank You" party for all our volunteers where we tucked into jacket potatoes with homemade chilli and scrummy cakes donated by the amazing Mari at Mari's Bakes, all the while putting our brains to the test with a quiz night, again hosted by the amazing Pete Cook who gives his time freely to support our cause, supported by his lovely wife Jackie! As well as the prizes for the winners [and the losers!] we gave everyone a Christmas present at the end of the night - posh mini toiletries for the ladies and homemade chocolate and marshmallow flapjack for the gents! Thanks to volunteers Jane and Morgan who came in specially to put the chilli the slow cooker and get the jackets in the oven - volunteering their time for their own thank you party - diamonds!

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of what

Love Dereham has achieved!

Our volunteers, local partner agencies and churches, donors and supporters - you are all wonderful and we're so thankful we get to do this community work with you ❤️