Healthy Investment, the mutually owned provider of savings and investments based in Bury, Greater Manchester, has donated £500 to Porch Boxes, a local food bank. The charity has seen demand for its crisis packs more than double since the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown.
Healthy Investment is a friendly society that provides savings and investments to more than 110,000 members, who are also its owners. It traces its history back to the religiously inspired temperance movement of the early Nineteenth Century and has been an advocate of ethical investment for more than 180 years.
Porch Boxes operates from premises in Bury’s Radcliffe neighbourhood. It collects donations of non-perishable goods and toiletries which are distributed to vulnerable households around the borough by a range of partner organisations.
Peter Green, chief executive of Healthy Investment, said, “Food banks are feeling even more pressure on their resources as they try to meet the huge increase in demand for their services caused by the Coronavirus outbreak. Porch Boxes is a local charity we have supported in the past and we are pleased to be able to do so again at a time of such great need.
“Hopefully things will start to return to normal soon but until then we know that a lot of families in the communities around our office are struggling and need some extra help during these difficult times. Our members trust us to invest their money in an ethical way and I am sure they would also approve of us supporting such a worthy cause on their behalf.”
Julia Rowlands, chair of Porch Boxes, said, “We are extremely grateful to Healthy Investment for their generous donation, which comes at a time when there has been a huge increase in demand for our assistance. We have delivered more than 1,300 food parcels to the local community in the last six weeks alone, which is more than double the number we would usually expect to provide.”
