Woman nominated for award for pet food donations

Rebecca Harrington is one of the nominees at BBC CWR's Make a Difference awards

A woman who provides pet food parcels to food banks has been nominated for an award.

The owner of Purdy's pet shop in Coventry, Rebecca Harrington, said in two months "we've done 124 bags, so that's 124 weeks' worth of food".

She is one of the nominees in the animal category at BBC CWR's Make a Difference awards.

People and projects have been nominated in Coventry and Warwickshire for the positive impact they have made.

Ms Harrington, who volunteered last year at a few food banks, said she "quickly realised" that people were getting food, then "feeding their animals first".

She added this was leaving them without food, "which kind of defeated the object a little bit and I thought 'well, there's got to be a way that people could help.'"

The Radford shop owner said: "We literally worked out that we have to put parcels together, so over the course of a few months we worked out nutritionally what would help an animal for a week."

Purdy's in Radford was established in January 2020

The project is now "in four food bank centres and one hub for social supermarket" and while 124 bags have been done, "it's growing".

She added: "Within two months to get that, it's amazing. But there's 15 food banks in Coventry and we want to be able to supply all of them."

Ms Harrington said: "I haven't got loads of money and I've been there where I've had to literally look at the price tag of the food, so I know what it's like."

The awards event will take place on Sunday 8 September.