A CROWDFUNDER to give Falmouth’s most vulnerable a free hot meal cooked by a top chef has almost tripled its target of £5,000.

The Cornish Bank in Church Street, teamed up with Falmouth and Penryn Foodbank to provide subsidised meals in its canteen cooked by chef Tessa J.

It set up the Crowdfunder to raise money to provide food tokens for users of the food bank who could then use them to exchange for meals at the Bank. Every donation was match-funded so every donator’s one pound equalled two.

The original target of £5,000 was nearly reached at the end of the Crowdfunder but after a last minute push and an online article in the Packet, the figure shot up to now nearly £14,000.

Organiser and co-Cornish Bank owner Rufus Maurice told the Packet the result was ‘astounding’ but he hoped donations would continue.

"We were astounded by peoples' generosity," he said. "we had hoped to raise a few thousand but to date its raised nearly £14,000! That’s a lot of kind people in Falmouth and beyond!
"This means The Bank Canteen will be able to provide thousands of hot meals to people in a warm space this winter, free of charge. It’s a brilliant thing for reducing hunger and poverty but also helping reduce the isolation that often goes hand in hand with it."

He said people can still donate through the website and the Crowdfunder by going to the Cornish Bank website.

He told BBC Radio Cornwall’s Julia Skentelbery he was inspired to set up the scheme after seeing how a friend of his was suffering in the current cost of living crisis.

 “We’re in the centre of the town it’s open it’s warm and we bring a lot of people in there but we were worried about the people who didn’t feel they could access that and come in," he said.

“Just seeing a friend using the food bank, the shame she felt and it isolated her, I felt that the social isolation you get from poverty is as big as the problem as not feeding yourself or not heating your house.

“The tragedy of that conversation was her saying she was going home in the evening but if she’d got a meal it was tins from the supermarket.

“She didn’t really have electric to heat them up and if you can’t heat your food up out of a tin there is an issue and then you’re at home dealing with that feeling it’s getting worse and worse.

“It breaks my heart.”

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The warm meals are all produced from local produce. They use the Gleaning Network to pick up crops not picked in fields and donating the veg as well as working with Cornwall Waste Action.

“The main thing is we’re going to cook hot nutritious meals,” he said. “There’ll be tokens given to the food bank that look exactly like the tokens you get at the bar. Walk into the Bank with the token and no one will know it’s from a foodbank, you’ll just be a normal customer.”

The first meals will be served today (Monday) and Rufus says he hopes it is something that, eventually, can be replicated throughout the country.

Because the cost of heating the building it is not open all day at the moment but people are welcome to come before the music starts between 5.30pm and 8pm and stay or they can take the meals home. He said the Cornish Bank makes no profit from the meals.