Warm welcome for community fridge

The facility will be open between Tuesday and Saturday at Little Yorkshire on Wales Road, Kiveton Park.

And on the first day it was open, the fridge was emptied in 50 minutes.

Joy Wright, a director at Kiveton Park and Wales Community Development Trust, said the plan for the facility had come from Kerry Lowe.

She said: “Kerry came to our meeting with Steve from Little Yorkshire.

“She talked about setting up a community fridge where people can get food that otherwise would’ve been ditched.

“We’ve got a foodbank in the village but not everybody can access it.

“This food was going to waste and the Co-Op here is quite large now.

“They were paying a company to take their waste products away and destroy them.

“We worked on this project for months, with Kerry researching community fridges.

“We’ve been collecting leftover things at the Co-Op for a few months and distributing them in the village.

“Then Martin Gray at Steelphalt offered some funding and that allowed us to buy a big fridge.”

The fridge will be refilled every day and anyone who is struggling is welcome to visit and take whatever they need.

She said: “There are all sorts of food available — cheese, lots of bread and pastry.

“There’s a heck of a lot of veg.

“It’s enough to feed people.

“There was even a box of TicTacs.

“It’s really good. Steve [from Little Yorkshire] is open five days a week so people can go in and pick up free food [five days a week].”

Joy said volunteers were needed to keep the venture alive.

She said: “I’m absolutely thrilled. It’s taken so much work.

“There have been a lot of hiccups.

“It started to look like it was impossible.

“There’s no time limit.

“It’s [going] as long as we’ve got people to run it.

“We’re trying to get more people involved.”