About
About our foodbank
Launched in 2000, Salisbury Foodbank was the first Trussell Trust foodbank in the UK.
Our story begins in Bulgaria
In 1996 Paddy and Carol Henderson were working for a UN feeding programme, when they met Baby Boris, a street baby living at Central Railway Station with his 14-year-old mother.
Paddy tells us:
“Baby Boris was really, really small and very vulnerable and very smelly! I used to cuddle him and he craved it and would nestle into my fleecy top while the mother ate her food. I vowed we would keep him alive over the winter. We used to bring him formula milk and try and get his Mum to use clean water. He lived! Later Baby Boris was taken into a baby orphanage.
We had seen the horrendous state of many orphanages and wondered what was better for him: life on the streets with a drug addict teenage mum or in a baby orphanage where conditions were likely to be dire? I knew that his mother really loved him. It was then that I had to do something to get these 60+ kids off the streets and away from glue-sniffing, drugs and child prostitution.”
The Trussell Trust is founded
The Trussell Trust was founded by the couple in 1997 based on a legacy left by Carol’s mother, Betty Trussell.
Moved to help forgotten people, The Trussell Trust’s initial Bulgaria projects focussed on improving conditions for the 60+ children sleeping at Central Railway Station in Bulgaria. The Trust’s work soon expanded not only in Bulgaria but in the UK too.
Salisbury Foodbank is born
Whilst fundraising for Bulgaria in 2000, Paddy received a call from a desperate mother in Salisbury saying: “My children are going to bed hungry tonight – what are you going to do about it.”
Paddy investigated local indices of deprivation and ‘hidden hunger’ in the UK. The shocking results showed that significant numbers of local people faced short term hunger as a result of a sudden crisis.
Paddy started Salisbury Foodbank in his garden shed and garage, providing three days’ of emergency food to local people in crisis.
In 2004, the UK Foodbank Network was launched teaching churches and communities nationwide how to start their own foodbanks.