Gainsborough Community Library in Ipswich is celebrating the success of its healthy pop-up shop.
The pop-up shop has been running since October providing affordable bags of healthy fruit and vegetables for local households.
During lockdown, library staff and the Voices 4 Gainsborough Library community group were regularly delivering fruit and veg boxes to local people on low incomes. Once libraries opened up again the Voices group were keen to carry on providing fruit and vegetables cheaply. The library launched the new pop-up shop and Voices gained funding from the Suffolk Community Restart Fund for reusable cotton bags for the scheme.
A volunteer from Voices collects fresh fruit and vegetables from Ipswich Market every Thursday morning, delivers it to the library and helps to sort it into bags. Another volunteer opens the shop at 1PM.
The library is selling 30 bags of fruit and vegetables a week for only £2 a bag. Recently all 30 sold out in only 13 minutes! The aim is to increase to 40 bags a week in the near future.
Mandy Grimwood, Manager of Gainsborough Library, has been very involved in the scheme. She said:
“We’re always looking to respond to the needs of people in our community and we’ve been thrilled by the success of the scheme. Its popularity shows that people realise the importance of a healthy diet, but it can be difficult for people on low incomes to afford fruit and vegetables, particularly with costs on the increase.”
Over Christmas the bags contained additional toiletries and toys thanks to an Arnold Clark Community Fund grant.
The scheme is one of the many reasons Mandy was recently shortlisted for a Health and Wellbeing Award by Libraries Connected with Gainsborough Library showcasing how Suffolk’s Libraries meet the many and varied needs of local communities. Mandy also wrote a blog for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport about her library.
Gainsborough Library would love to hear from anyone keen to help support the pop-up shop so it can help more local families.
