Food Bank Donations Amount To Over 2,094kg

October 7 2024

Michaelmas Food Bank Collection, organised this year by the Student Council, collected in over 300 items from ESS families, weighing almost 200 kilograms.

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

This philanthropic haul brings the total to over 2,094kg of food since the school started donating a decade ago. (Kindergarten began donating a year earlier, in 2014). The initiative later established itself as part of our staple Michaelmas celebrations involving Seedlings to Class 12.

‘More Than A Meal’ Receives Fresh Harvest Veg

Our bursar, Donna Ewing, delivered the produce from Michaelmas’s harvest table to the homeless breakfast service, More Than A Meal, where she volunteers.

Spotlight on Alumnus: Bill Irving

Bill Irving, the alumnus behind the food donation initiative, which marked its tenth year for the School on Thursday, attended ESS all the way through the school, before returning many years later to collect the donations annually as an Edinburgh Food Bank volunteer driver.

“I can do almost anything with my hands”, Bill said in 2020, as he loaded the boxes and boxes of donated items into the back of his van from the School gate, to later be made up into food parcels for vulnerable people in crisis. “That’s a lot in thanks to this school, doing woodwork, handwork, knitting…I had to not tell my friends I knitted at school”, he continued with a chuckle. “My only regret regarding the facilities here was not to take up music. I regret I don’t play an instrument. I could play the recorder, but that was it.”

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 was Captain of the first 15. It was rugby and cricket back then. We weren’t allowed to kick a ball. ‘All your brains will go to your feet’ they’d say. If we were caught playing it on the front lawn, the teacher would make us write 500 lines on the composition of grass. It would teach you”, he reminisces.

Bill, who attended the all-through school alongside his brothers Jim and Ralph, adds. “I need to be doing things in retirement.”

He has been volunteering with Edinburgh Food Bank for ten years now.

*Food bank donation history for Edinburgh Steiner School:

• 2024 – 197.8kg
• 2023 – 175.3kg
• 2022 – 246.5kg
• 2021 – 183.95kg
• 2020 – 144.45kg
• 2019 – 169.6kg
• 2018 – 227.7kg
• 2017 – 310.45kg
• 2016 – 259.4kg
• 2015 – 99.9kg
• 2014 – 79.3kg
• TOTAL since 2014 is 2094.35kg