Over the past 5 weeks we have teamed up with the amazing volunteer motorcycle riders from the nationwide task force Bike Shed Community Response to launch a delivery service providing weekly food shopping for young carer families in Dorset during lockdown.

When we spoke to the young carer community it became clear that so many families have been facing huge challenges as a result of Covid-19. Many families in our community are at high risk and therefore shielding. Unable to get food delivery slots, job losses, increasing electricity costs and no longer having access to school meals means that feeding their families had become a huge and very real challenge.

We created the MYTime COVID-19 Food Programme, which supports young carers who are most in need, by providing them and their families with a weekly food shopping and delivery service. This programme was generously funded by CAF, however that funding has sadly run out but the need is still incredibly real.

It currently costs us £600 a week to provide the food shopping our young carers and their families. We have applied for lots of other grants who we are hoping can fund us in the long term but we are asking for your help to continue this service in the mean time. Our volunteer riders have offered to continue to deliver for us (this is all done at their own cost- they pay for their fuel/insurance and everything else themselves) if we can raise enough to cover the cost of the shopping.

Thank you so much for helping us to support our incredible young carers and their families in what are such challenging times. Whilst lockdown may be easing it is clear that the financial and social impacts of Covid-19 are really starting to hit.