The Largs food bank and Church of the Nazarene have teamed up to provide freshly made meals for those most in need in the town during lockdown.

Before the coronavirus crisis, the church held a weekly community café on a Tuesday, where residents could make a donation for their food.

However, after lockdown was imposed, Pastor Tasha Alison came up with a new way to support those in the community most in need.

She said: “We started working with the food bank at the beginning of lockdown.

“When the lockdown happened, we could not do our weekly community café, our big focus this year is hospitality, health and holiness and reaching out to the community.

“Working with the food bank just seemed like a natural fit for us, we reached out and so that’s where it started.”

The church originally donated the meals to the food bank out of its own pocket but has received donations in the last couple of weeks, including a large donation of fresh food from Wetherspoons following the closure of The Paddle Steamer.

This food has been preserved and frozen to use in meals throughout lockdown, including Italian, Chinese and Scottish dishes.

The Pastor says she wanted to create meals rather than donate the produce straight to the food bank because it can be more useful to people living on their own.

She said: “When people are living alone, its hard to cook for one person.

“In isolation the way we are now, sometime its difficult to get motivated to cook healthy meals, we just felt that providing fresh meals would be a god way to reach out to the community and tell them that they’re loved and cared for.

“We can’t give them a hug, so the next best thing is giving them a meal.”

Pastor Alison says that it is their duty as a church to help those who are less fortunate than themselves and working with the foodbank is the ideal opportunity to do so.

She said: “The church isn’t just a place for people to come for spiritual enrichment, we are called to feed the poor, to take care of the sick.

“It is our job as Christians to take care of our neighbours, and because the foodbank already has the connection with people in the community that had needs, it seemed like the perfect place to go.

“Rather than try and reinvent the wheel, it seemed natural to team up.”

All food is cooked fresh on a Thursday morning before being delivered to the foodbank the same day.

There is an emphasis on vegetables in the dishes, with the church looking to provide food that is comforting but also healthy.

Simon Dell from the foodbank said: “The church have been fantastic, initially using some of the ingredients from the shut down restaurants and cafes, and now with some of the dried and long-life ingredients that we have in the food bank.

“They have been producing 20-30 meals every week and this is a great compliment to the dried, tinned, chilled and frozen food that we give out, and have been very much appreciated.”

Throughout April, the Largs and Millport food banks gave out around 150 food parcels, which is 50 per cent higher than the previous month.

A new app has also been launched to help people find their local food bank, search for ‘Munch’ on the app store.