A DARLINGTON foodbank going from "strength to strength" is teaming up with Darlington Scouts and appealing for donations to help those less fortunate this Christmas.

NQA Foodank in Darlington, with Darlington Scouts, is asking people to donate toys games and as well as food for the Christmas period.

Stephan Morgan, foodbank coordinator, said: "The Scouts are running the toy side of appeal and we're running the food side of things.

"We have donation points set up in Morrisons, Iceland, Poundland and we have the donation point at the back of our building.

"We've had other shops offering but we've actually had a lot of donations that people have brought to the building because it's quite central.

NQA Foodbank opened on the weekend of November 7

Stephan Morgan added: "We've got insurances in place now we are fully registered, we have a phone numbers up and running and connections in place.

“How we’ve got things set up, we have the loading bay, which has a market stall which separates the back area and the fridge

“People can come down and be greeted by a volunteer who takes a request from them of what they need any dietary requirements that they might need, the size of the family or if they have any pets.

“These details are then passed to a runner, the runner then runs it through the foodbank gets anything that they require, packs the parcel or tops up an existing parcel with any extra things that are needed.

“They then come back through to the first volunteer who then serves the person.

“The request then gets marked as complete.

“We are looking to have secure containers for police to access with a one time passcode for people to get food parcels out of hours as well.

“How this will work is we will be installing two lockers which will be bolted to the outside foodbank area, we have got a few things to sort out.

“At the moment we are aiming to insulate the lockers as best we can, keys will be available, so there will be inside the foodbank to load it and there will be a key next to the locker in a key safe.

“So police can access the foodbank in the middle of the night using a one-time code online which will be approved.

“We are going strength to strength, it’s definitely a team effort, it isn’t just about me, if it wasn’t for the team, members of the public and other organisations this wouldn’t be possible.

“On the first weekend we did 70 people just on the first weekend on Tuesday alone this week we did 30 people, as much as we are no questions we do ask a couple of questions.

“But with asking these questions we have got a lot of backstory from people, and we are finding that there’s a lot of people that can’t prove that they’re getting benefits or they’ve just been laid off from work or their jobs gone or they were self employed and there’s no support there for them.

“They’re just wading through all these support programmes that are available and they just don’t qualify for them because they can’t prove certain information or they can’t get food parcels through normal means so they’ve been coming to us.

“People say to us well you’re just going to be giving food out to people willy nilly but if they came down when we are open they would know that we aren’t.

“These people do need it otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting out in a mobility scooter in the cold and rain waiting for a food parcel if they didn’t need one, which is why we want to step up the game to be able to deliver as well where possible.

"This is an entire coalition affect, there isn’t one person behind this and without everybody being behind it none of this would be going forward.

“I think it’s important to emphasise how much the community has supported this and how much of a community effort it is and it has been a community and shown that our community is as strong as ever as much as it has been separated.”