Fivemiletown Coronavirus Response Group was formed several months ago, providing valued support to hundreds of people. A milestone was marked recently as the group delivered its 3000th meal.

Coordniator Iain Lendrum explained, “We delivered our 3000th meal two weeks ago and since then we have scaled back on the meals as a lot of people are out and about more. We continue to support those who are isolating and have no family support. 

“We are maintaining our food bank but this has also been scaled back recently and is now operating two nights per week. The food boxes for the Council for those who are shielding are also continuing until the end of July.”

Extending a helping hand doesn’t stop there, in addition to providing hot meals to the community the volunteer group has also actively distributed Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). “All the local schools have received PPE to help them prepare for reopening. This includes sanitiser, face shields, masks, gloves and so on. 

Local businesses helped support us in providing meals and their sponsorship of this helped cut costs and enable us to provide support to the community in other ways. In turn we have also helped support some local businesses like hair dressers who required PPE to reopen.” 

Catering for both young and old is also a priority for the group with 300 activity bags delivered to school children in Fivemiletown this week.  Going forward we are looking into other ways that we can continue to help support the local community. Now we are looking at steps to help the community open up again in a different but safe manner,” added Mr Lendrum.