Bilton duo Katie Goodall and Leasa Marriott have been helping feed families in need since October 2020 through their project ‘Rugby Fill the Gap’.

Now, together with the two other trustees of the scheme, they want to do more for the community.

Their plan is to organise games and activities that will help everyone’s mental health and raise awareness of their food gifts too.

The four trustees are Katie Goodall, Leasa Marriott, Lorna Lavery and Nickie Brightwell. 

Leasa said: “Fill The Gap has been focusing on helping families and individuals with food for a few months and it was always our intention to step this up a gear when we felt the time was right. 

“We wanted to enhance our offering to the community and also let more people know about what we do and why we do it. We will be still offering our core service with food but wanted an interactive and community involvement. 

“The pandemic has affected everybody, whether it be financially or affecting mental health. We talked about how important not just adult mental health is but the children have missed out on so much in the past 14 months.”

She said the Fill the Gap team wanted to get the community together again now lockdown measures are easing. The offering is open to everyone in Rugby, not just those who receive food from Fill the Gap.

Plans are at an early stage, Leasa said. The group hopes to create a timetable of activities once they have more idea of what people are interested in.

“Interest and feedback has been amazing...Cooking classes and grow-your-own-produce-on-an-allotment have seen the most uptake so far. We think this is because this is something completely different for families to be involved in.

“We do not have a limit of the amount of people that can take part as we can run different sessions at different times so would be looking to accommodate every single person that expresses an interest.”

The activities on offer are likely to include rounders, netball, basketball, hockey, tennis, boxing, grow your own produce and cooking classes.

Fill the Gap will still be providing food for families who need help.

Find out more on the Fill the Gap facebook page or email rugbyfillthegap@gmail.com.