The Filling Station

Feeding the hungry on the streets

This year we have chosen to support the Filling Station

The Filling Station started in 1993 and provides 40 or 50 homeless people with soup, sandwiches, hot dogs and coffee every Thursday evening in the centre of Swindon. Each client also receives a bag with tins, toiletries, candles etc. to keep them going through the week. They also hand out clothes and blankets when needed.

As well as providing all this, the charity, which has about 70 volunteers, also has an outreach worker from Threshold Housing Link on hand every week to give advice on accommodation and so on.

It’s more than just helping provide for physical needs – it’s a vital source of social and emotional support for the many who come from deprived or abused backgrounds. One of the helpers is actually a former alcoholic who sorted his life out and now wants to help others.

You may have read in the local paper that the charity suffered a burglary recently at their base in Wroughton, in which all their supplies of tinned food, clothes and even their transportable stove used for heating the soup and hot dogs was stolen. As they depend on donations of foodstuffs from the public, local businesses and events like harvest festivals, this has left them with a big hole to fill and have had to resort to buying food to distribute, thereby depleting the small reserves they had. We hope that anything that we raise for them this year will help fill that gap.