By 
A SOCIAL supermarket in Strabane is to receive £75,969 in funding from Derry City and Strabane District Council.
At a recent Health and Community Committee meeting members approved the funding to Strabane Community Project, for its Grassroots supermarket.
The Department for Communities (DfC) has operated an Social Supermarket Model (SSM) Pilot programme since October 2017, to test its potential to tackle food poverty and its root causes.
An officers’ report to committee members explained, “The objective of the SSM funding is to develop, implement and sustain a bespoke model, taking into account local need.
“The overriding aim of the SSM is to support and work towards holistic, flexible, sustainable social supermarket-type approaches to food insecurity/food poverty, addressing both the underlying cause and the immediate need.
“The demand for support has increased substantially since 2017 and providers report an increase in need, with a particular increase in the number of people who are working or who have never needed assistance before now seeking support.”
SDLP councillor Catherine McDaid welcomed the funding but said she was disappointed in the need for Social Supermarkets.
“We really shouldn’t need to be providing Social Supermarkets in this day and age,” she concluded. “But it’s good it’s here, and thank God it’s being funded.”