As a community interest company Smile Together profits are reinvested back into patient facilities and our local community. We recently made a generous £500 financial contribution to 21 Foodbanks, Food Hubs, Community Larders and other such organisations who provide much needed support for local people across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.
This is in addition to our regular donations of oral health packs to these charities for onward distribution to local families and individuals most in need.
Alongside delivering our patient care, Smile Together colleagues are passionate about tackling oral health inequality. The inspiration for donating oral health packs came during the first Covid lockdown in Spring 2020 when we had to temporarily pause our visits to schools, nurseries and family hubs in areas of high decay across the county. Instead, we started making up and donating oral health packs to Foodbanks, homelessness and other local charities, with over 10,000 packs now donated.
The response to our additional £500 donations was utterly heartwarming and included:
“Thank you for this valuable donation to the work of our Bodmin Way Community Larder. It really helps the community and acknowledges the work that Abi and volunteers put into fighting food poverty and waste”.
“Please extend huge thanks to all at Smile Together Dental for your continued generous support of Penryn and Falmouth Foodbank. We continue to see increased numbers of clients needing our services, and we are working hard to ensure we are signposting them where applicable to other agencies able to help with ongoing support (for instance, with emergency fuel bills support etc)”.
“This is fantastic news! Our users of the Rame Community Kitchen will benefit directly with all the money being spent on much needed food. We are supporting over 25 people a week who are struggling to meet the needs of providing food for themselves or their families on the Rame Peninsula. We truly are very grateful for this donation” – Rame Peninsula Trust, who also took to Facebook, sharing: “A massive thanks to Smile Together for their amazingly generous donation towards the Rame Community Kitchen larder. This will enable us to purchase supplies and keep this much needed service going over the next year! Thank you, you beautiful bunch of smiley folk, we couldn’t keep these projects running without your kind hearted beings”
“Thank you for your very generous donation which is gratefully received. We really appreciate the support in these difficult times” – Saltash Foodbank
“Thank you very much for such a donation and we are delighted you want to support our work. Your gift will certainly enable us to continue helping those who are struggling. Many, many thanks for such a wonderful gift” – St Austell Foodbank
“Many thanks for your generosity. We will use the money to support our community larder providing food support to those within the community” – Treverbyn Community Larder
“This is absolutely brilliant and very much appreciated” – Camelford Old Bank Community Larder
“Wow thank you all so much, our huge appreciation!” – Coachhouse Food Hub Tintagel, who also thanked us publicly via Facebook.
“That’s a wonderful surprise for us. Thank you so very much” – Newquay DISC
“Thank you very much, we greatly appreciate all help that enables us to help those in need from our community food store” – Penzance Growing Links CIC, who also run a community garden, street food project and so much more as a community of support in Penzance.
“Thank you so much for this donation” – Liskeard & Looe Foodbank, who also took to Facebook, sharing: “Thank You SMILE TOGETHER DENTAL CIC. Your generosity is appreciated.”
“Thank you again so much for your pledge of support – we are so grateful” – Cornwall Community Foundation, which supports the Isles of Scilly which has no Foodbank.
Trelya, whose wonderful Lescudjack community building we share with them in Penzance, have been equally grateful and we also made donations to foodbanks in Bude, Camborne/Pool/Reduth, Helston/Lizard, Launceston, Newquay, Truro and Wadebridge/Camelford/Bodmin plus Penzance Food for Families.
Many of the foodbanks we support are part of The Trussell Trust – we love making a difference in partnership here at Smile Together. And a big shout out to our finance colleagues for speeding through all the payments before our financial year end!
