Louth people urged to support St Patrick's Parish Soup Kitchen & Food Parcels Christmas appeal

An appeal is being made for the local community to dig deep this Friday, December 12th to help support the work of St Patrick's Parish Soup Kitchen and Food Parcels.

Volunteers will be located throughout Dundalk for their major fundraiser - their annual bucket collection.

The group, which receives no government funding or grants, relies completely on donations from the public, local schools, businesses, sports clubs and other organisations.

The cost of running the soup kitchen at Roden Place and a weekly food bank will be approximately €47,000 this year.
St Patrick's Parish Soup Kitchen opens nightly from Monday to Saturday from 7pm to 8pm and on Sundays from 2pm to 3pm with a hot meal and drink provided to those in need.

Their annual Christmas Food Drive is also underway. All donations will be used for the food parcels every Friday (from 10am to 11am) when those in need of extra support can get a bag of basic food essentials like bread, milk, eggs, soup, cereals, rice/pasta, curry/pasta sauce etc.

Those who attend on Fridays are asked to bring a bag for life with them to help reduce costs and be more environmentally friendly!

Volunteers from the Food Parcels will be in the Soup Kitchen for those dropping off non-perishable food donations from 12pm to 4pm from today, Tuesday 9th to Thursday 11th and next week from Monday 15th to Thursday 18th. Just ring the doorbell at the glass porch on the left hand side of St Patrick's Church car park.

For those interested in supporting the food drive the following items would be gratefully received: Tinned beans, peas, sweetcorn, (dried) pasta, rice (packet or microwaveable), noodles, packet or tinned soup, passata/pasta sauce, curry sauce, spaghetti hoops, tinned tuna/salmon, gravy, sachet mixes, breakfast cereals, porridge, biscuits, crackers, crisps, tinned fruit, creamed rice, custard, jelly and jam.

Also tea, coffee and diluted orange/blackcurrant or sweets/chocolates,mince pies and soft drinks for Christmas.

If you aren't in Dundalk this Friday and can't support the food drive, but would like to support the work that the group does, you can donate on Christmas Eve at the church gate collections.

For those who don't have any spare cash or coins on them, QR codes will be on all collection boxes which means you can donate online through a link to their i-Donate page, which appears when you point the camera on your smartphone at the code.