London’s first Multibank launches with expectation of helping 40,000 families in first year
Melanie May | 23 July 2024 | News
The new service launches today (23 July) and is led by The Felix Project. It will redistribute 400,000 surplus essentials donated by Amazon and other businesses and is expected to help 40,000 families in need across London over the next 12 months.
The Multibank is in West London and will provide essentials like toiletries, baby products, cleaning goods and bedding donated by Amazon, and other national and regional businesses. It is an expansion of the Multibank network, co-founded by Gordon Brown and Amazon and follows three others, launched in Fife, Scotland in 2022, in Wigan, Greater Manchester in 2023, and in Swansea in March, 2024.
Felix’s Multibank builds on The Felix Project’s work of rescuing surplus food and redistributing it to vulnerable Londoners through a network of charities, schools and community groups. Distribution partners for Felix’s Multibank include Little Village, Trussell Trust, Lambeth Healthy Living Platform, Surplus to Supper, and St Raphael’s Family Wellbeing Centre.
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Amazon helped to establish the warehouse operations, and five Amazon employees will work on-site for the first full year of operation, with the company providing logistics support to transport the donations to community organisations across London. It has also developed a “click and collect” system for the Multibanks which shares a weekly inventory of donated essential goods from each one with local community groups, charities and care professionals enabling them to order what they need.
Charlotte Hill OBE, CEO, The Felix Project, said:
“Every day The Felix Project is helping to provide healthy and nutritious meals to people in need across London, but we know it is not just food they want. For those on low incomes all items are a struggle to afford, from toiletries and cleaning products to bedding and other household goods. Thanks to this incredible partnership, Felix’s Multibank will be able to ensure our network of community organisations can provide more of the things people need and just as importantly prevent perfectly usable items from going to waste.”
Gordon Brown, former UK Prime Minister, said:
“As I go round the country, I find too many children growing up in homes without heating, bedrooms without beds, floors without floor coverings, kitchens without kitchen utensils and bathrooms without soap, shampoo or toothpaste. Having gained experience from the benefits to families of our Multibanks in Scotland, the North West of England and Wales we are delighted now to work with The Felix Project who have such a strong reputation for doing good in the capital. Felix’s Multibank will be able to take a holistic view of the overall need of the families they serve and provide some of the non-food basics for those in greatest need across London. We are grateful to the companies and foundations who are supporting the Multibanks and to The Felix Project for joining with us to make the roll out in London possible.”
Funding for the London site
The Mayor of London has committed £250,000 to help with running costs for the London site. Additional funding has been provided through the Multibank Fund. This was established with £1 million of seed funding from Amazon and Comic Relief to help finance the expansion of Multibanks in areas of need across the UK.
Amazon’s partnership with The Felix Project
The launch of Felix’s Multibank follows a four-year partnership between Amazon and The Felix Project. Since 2020, Amazon has donated over 10 million meals to the charity, and provides drivers and vans to transport food donations across London every week. Earlier this year, it donated £500,000 to fund a new South London depot to help The Felix Project meet increasing levels of food insecurity across London, with the charity expecting to deliver more than 35 million meals in 2024. Employees across Amazon also regularly volunteer in Felix’s depots and kitchens. So far it has donated more than 3 million items to the Multibanks.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.