Manchester South Central Foodbank opened in April 2014 in response to the need for a foodbank that covered the Hulme, Moss Side, Whalley Range and Old Trafford areas. These are some of the most deprived areas in Greater Manchester, which is an area with a high level of poverty. With a child population of about 600,000, roughly 41.7% of children are living in poverty in the region. We are therefore a small but busy foodbank, in the 2023/2024 financial year we supported 4997 individuals with a food parcel.
The Foodbank is operated by the Registered Charity Bridging the Gap (Manchester). Our mission is to to support people in immediate crisis by providing emergency food provisions and to seek longer term solutions to address the underlying causes of financial hardships, enabling communities to build resilience and a life free from poverty.
4 GoodGymers have supported Manchester South-Central Foodbank with 2 tasks.
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Th-rice the goodness
Monday 16th March
Written by Ben Foster
Robert, Sam, and Ben met up for our winter monthly foodbank run to donate tins, cans, and other non-perishables to Manchester South-Central. With the Easter holidays around the corner, they are always in need for additional items.
With Rob having recently moved and Sam returning from a trip to South America, they picked the smart option to run to ASDA (the drop-off point) to buy items to donate. Ben on the other hand was laden with lots of tins, cans, rice, and UHT milk partially from home and some donated from a recent GoodGym mission. We managed to donate lots of tinned veg, pasta sauce, rice, tinned meat, microwave noodles, rice pudding, plus some toiletries too (the bread and eggs were already there when we arrived...).. The donation of old books and children's books is a nice touch too!
With a lighter load, the run back via Manchester Met University campus was a bit more straightforward. Lots of stories from Sam from his travels abroad, with Rob having done a similar trip last year. We're also counting down to the lighter evenings in a few weeks for some more gardening or other tasks!
Overall, a crate day out
Saturday 29th November 2025
Written by Ben Foster
Stefanie and Ben went along to the big Tesco Extra on Chester Road to encourage people to add a few items to their shopping basket to donate to the local foodbank.
With fetching green overalls and a stash of shopping lists to hand out, we did our bit to ask those doing their shop to provide anything from deodorant, nappies, UHT milk, to tinned fruit, veg or meat, and cereal.
During our shift, we saw over 35 big crates of food go into the foodbank van to be sorted and added to food parcels.
Kudos to Stefanie for getting out despite feeling a bit under the weather (hope you're feeling better soon!)