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Michaelmas Food Bank Collection

September 29 2025

Michaelmas is on Monday, 29 September 2025.

 

 

The Edinburgh Steiner School community donated 197.8kg in 2024, bringing the total to 1,265.35kg of food since it started donating at Michaelmas in 2015.

 

On behalf of everyone at Edinburgh Food Project I would like to say a huge thank you to each and every member of the team and all the pupils at Edinburgh Steiner School for your very generous Harvest Collection.

Together you donated an amazing 197.8kg to people struggling to afford food in Edinburgh. That is about the weight of an Australian Sea Lion! This will make a real difference to people in need, giving them essential meals during their time of crisis.

With heartfelt gratitude, thank you.”

Calypso Coulton, Fundraiser, Edinburgh Food Bank (2024)

 

All contributions go to local Edinburgh Food Project (formerly Edinburgh North West Foodbank) and we would be very grateful if our community of parents / carers could send in food items the charity is really low on. Leading up to Michaelmas, this list includes vegetables, pulses and rice (dried or tinned):

2024’s list:

  • Seedlings: Soup
  • Kindergarten: Tinned Vegetables and Tinned Tomatoes
  • Class 1: Tinned Fruit
  • Class 2: Beans: Butter, Broad, Cannellini, Haricot, Flageolet, Kidney, Mung, Pinto, Black Eye, (tins Baked Beans)
  • Class 3: UHT Milk
  • Class 4: Long-life Fruit Juice
  • Class 5: Lentils and Chickpeas
  • Class 6: Dry Peas: Split Green/Yellow, Whole Yellow/Green
  • Class 7: Rice White/Brown
  • Class 8: Cereal
  • Class 9: Deodorant, Shampoo and Razors
  • Class 10: Coffee and tea
  • Class 11: Pasta Sauce and Curry Sauce
  • Class 12: Household Cleaning Products
  • Teachers, alumni, local community: dried lentils, chickpeas, rice etc

 

Whilst Edinburgh Food Project are in dire need of the above whole ingredients, donations of any foods will be gratefully received. View their ‘urgent‘ list here, which is updated regularly).

 

There will be a collection box in each classroom for your child or young person to add to on Monday before the festival (Michaelmas). 

 

This makes a significant difference to local vulnerable people in crisis. It is entirely voluntary and there is no expectation you must do this.

 

It is entirely voluntary and there is no expectation you must do this. Thank you to all those families who contribute.

 

 

Scholar: Food Bank Volunteer

Retired former pupil, Bill Irving, continues to give his time to Edinburgh Food Project for as long as his former School has been donating. Bill attended the school – then known as Rudolf Steiner School of Edinburgh – from the age of 4 in Kindergarten all the way through, graduating in 1963.

“I need to be doing things in retirement,” Bill said, as he loaded the boxes and boxes of donated items into the back of his van from the School gate in 2020, which were later made up into food parcels for vulnerable people in crisis. Bill has been volunteering for over ten years, since 2015.