FareShare
www.fareshare.org.uk
Everyday supermarkets are forced to landfill tonnes of fresh food; food that is perfectly OK to eat but is surplus to requirements and cannot be sold before it goes past its sell by date. At the same time 4 million people in the UK cannot afford a healthy diet.
Putting
two and two together FareShare was set up in the early nineties.
Run largely by volunteers it collects this surplus food and delivers
it to a range of community initiatives from homeless shelters
to breakfast clubs at inner city schools. However the impact that
this has goes far beyond simply providing good quality free food.
Before FareShare will start regularly delivering food, each organisation
must identify projects that it will undertake with the surplus
cash saved from buying food in the first place. In this way FareShare
indirectly funds thousands of charitable projects within the communities
that it operates.
When
I met last week with the FareShare London I was struck by how
professional the whole thing seemed - remarkable considering
how much of the work is carried out by volunteers, a charity
bursting with new projects and ideas. This year FareShare London
are planning to get involved further with the local community
organisations they deliver food to and it is to a project along
these lines that OPS are supporting.
They are planning to hold several training events aimed at educating disadvantaged people from the local community. The event will provide training in cooking, preparing and shopping for healthy food, whilst on a low budget, particularly useful for those people who are moving from hostel into their own accommodation. Another project will allow disadvantaged people to volunteer at FareShare, in return receiving free training in areas such as health and hygiene and food handling, and a credible reference; the first steps in breaking out of a cycle of long term unemployment.
John Arnold, January 2006