It’s been a while since our last update – we seem to get busier every year and trying to fit everything in is always a challenge.
2025 seemed to fly by and had, like every other, its highs and lows. We lost several dear friends of the Flat including Cat and also Freda Stephen. We miss them all very much. We were delighted to welcome RGU placement students Julja and Chelsea who both contributed so much during their time with us. As always, we have had fantastic support from many individuals and organisations, with special thanks to our local friends at St George’s Community Centre and Foodies Café at Tillydrone Campus.
In June, Ally King completed the 18-mile Kilt Walk on a dreich day and raised £1500 for our foodbank and for our good friends at Future Choices. We were delighted to be involved in the revival of the much-missed Tilly Gala Day and the wonderful Christmas Fair and look forward to seeing these events grow this year.
We were excited to see Granite City Good Food achieve Gold Award Status for sustainability around food – the first city in Scotland to reach this level. We have been a member of the Steering Group since its inception and it’s wonderful to gain this recognition through years of collaborative work.
Our service access figures have increased again, with over 7200 visits to the Flat last year. The mass transition of many to Universal Credit last year has kept Sarah incredibly busy (even more than usual) and the change in system has caused stress and anxiety to lots of our service users.
Despite having reduced our foodbank provision to a fortnightly rather than a weekly basis due to unprecedented demand, we are still issuing around the same quantity of parcels. We are ever grateful to CFINE, St George’s CC and Heather from Cairncry Community Centre who provide us with additional stock. We are currently supporting around seven times as many service accesses than ten years ago (with the same staff quota of two!) so our resources are somewhat stretched! As always though, we are delighted to be able to help, in some small way, anyone who comes to us.