Amazon, Gordon Brown and Andy Burnham launch huge charity initiative in Wigan

A family support initiative involving online retail giant Amazon, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Greater Manchester's mayor Andy Burnham was launched yesterday.

The scheme, based in Wigan, is looking to provide 400,000 surplus essential goods to more than 50,000 families in need in Greater Manchester this year. The ‘Brick-by-Brick’ project is hoping to follow on from the success of a similar idea supported by the former Prime Minister in Fife.

Wigan and Leigh charity The Brick were the frontrunners to help deliver this, according to Mr Burnham, due to their long-standing connections in the borough and across Greater Manchester.

READ MORE: University of Manchester students forcibly 'dragged' out of campus building after weeks-long strike

The site, just outside of the town centre, will be a community donations hub where Amazon and other companies can donate a wide range of surplus products and reach people directly through a network of charity groups and care professionals in the community.

The ‘multibank’ model, the original project of this nature, first launched in Fife, Scotland, as ‘The Big House’ in 2022. It was led by Amazon, Gordon Brown and local charity The Cottage Family Centre, which has now supported 50,000 families in Fife, Edinburgh and the Lothians with more than 500,000 products donated.

“We understood this is a model that could apply to other parts of the UK and luckily I met Andy Burnham and John Boumphrey, the head at Amazon and we thought Greater Manchester was a place that we could make a real difference. We found the right charity to do this with in The Brick," Mr Brown said.

“Once that was sorted things started to move quite quickly forward, and Keely and the others who run the Brick have