Tiptree Community Fridge boosts school uniform donations

Michelle Olley, 49, from Tiptree, started the Tiptree Community Fridge group at the end of June this year, after finding that she was often left with extra food that she didn’t use.

She met with Witham Community Hub and was helped by Tiptree Volunteers to get things moving quickly.

The Facebook group, Tiptree Community Fridge, now has more than 300 members and Michelle has 27 volunteers so far.

The group also recently helped hundreds of children following Michelle’s idea to encourage school uniform donations.

Jam producers Wilkin and Sons is now a sponsor of the fridge and donated strawberries to give to families.

The community fridge is looking to be set up in the library in Rectory Road, Tiptree, next month.

The Essex County Council must agree the fridge can be based in the library for it to proceed.

Michelle said: “We have been extremely busy over the last month.

“I had a thought about a month back to help parents with school uniform. So I put out a social media post asking for parents to donate uniform from all primaries in Tiptree and from the secondary school.

“We hired a seminar room for two Saturdays. Soon I was overwhelmed every day with requests for uniform, shoes, football boots from struggling families.

“We ran three days in the end and have received over 800 items, helped over 150 families with over 350 children.

“Requests are still coming in. We've even had donations come in specifically to help families to buy items we couldn't source.

“We will run the events each term and hold uniform in our premises when we open the Community Fridge.

“We hope to open in the library in early October on a small scale to provide free food.

“We are soon looking at our next initiative into how to keep people warm in conjunction with warm spaces.

“I now have 27 volunteers but we are always looking for more.”

For more information or to help, go to the Tiptree Community Fridge Facebook page.