Ealing Broadway Morrisons came alive to the sounds of the Caribbean with a mini carnival event that took place on Saturday (1 October 2022).
EALING.NEWS joined with Ealing Mayor Councillor Mohinder Midha and Ealing Broadway Councillor Julian Gallant to find out more about the Morrisons Community Wellness Carnival initiative to encourage local people to eat more healthily as well as helping local people with food in these difficult times.
The event came to Ealing having previously been run at other branches of the popular supermarket and is part of an initiative set up by Rose Morgan which also involves providing customers with seeds to plant.
Ealing Mayor, Councillor Mohinder Midha speaks at Morrisons Ealing Broadway as part of the Morrisons Community Wellness Carnival on 1 October 2022
Rose Morgan, who was awarded a British Empire Medal for her work in helping people explained:
“We’re giving away water, fruits and some other giveaways and things to make people smile. During lock down Seeds of Hope was a project that went all around the country and was popular.”
In Ealing Broadway, Claire is the Community Champion for Morrisons and takes great pride in being part of the community and helping it.
“I just love helping people. I like to think that as a company, we’re doing good things. We’re raising money for local children’s hospices, which is important at the moment. And today is all about health and well being as well so handing out lots of water, fruit and veg, raisins and other bits for the customers to help promote health and well being at the moment.”
“We’re supporting the local community and different charities. Our main focus at the moment is to help the local food banks. So we make up food packs that our customers currently buy from us. And then all that food and non food are then donated back to local food banks. We’re supporting local churches, baby banks, and the main Ealing food bank for the area. We also have a national charity at the moment, which is Together For Short Lives, which is raising money for children’s hospices.”
Councillor for Ealing Broadway, Julian Gallant explains his involvement and the importance of initiatives such as these across Ealing.
“Morrisons is in my ward. So they got in touch with me and said they had this whole champion programme where they’re getting stuff out to people who need it, and they’ve got a fantastic model. I immediately thought, brilliant, this is a business doing charity really well. So customers come in, they take a bag, they check out and they leave the bag there and they feel they’ve done something really concrete. Then you’ve got a bag of goods, which is there and they can be distributed very easily to people who really need it. So it’s a very good model. Morrisons generosity and also their customers generosity, going into the right place.”
Councillor Gallant explains how the bags are distributed by local volunteers across all part of Ealing.
“When the customers buy the bag, they leave it behind and then people like me can help get them out. I know for example, where there’s a hotel with a lot of people seeking asylum. They need it because they need cleaning products. I can take it there. I can take it out to schools, to churches and so on to help people. I know where those little niches of need are and I can help get it out there.”
Ann and Wayne from nearby St Mary’s Church are two of the many who volunteer their time to help local people with food and explain the importance of this project.
Ann says:
“This is an important project in helping provide food for people who are less fortunate than ourselves and also we are trying to reduce the amount of waste in the world. We have great people that volunteer to supply to food to people. We have Felix project who kindly donate food and DHL who deliver food for us.”
Wayne adds:
“At St Mary’s we give food out to people that come in and we have over 120 people come in to collect food. Morrisons give us food which we sort sand check and then and then people come and collect it. I give up my time to help those who are less fortunate than I am.”
Sanj is with the management team at Morrisons in Ealing Broadway and explains the importance of helping the community.
“We are very committed to this by having a Community Champion role to support the local charities with help and fundraising in store. Helping people and making good things happen is important and making a difference to the world and our local community.”
Photo gallery from Morrisons Community Wellness Carnival
