M&S Kendal

Manna House works for the benefit of the public in South Lakeland, providing advice, advocacy and a drop-in support center for those who are homeless, vulnerably housed, lonely or needing help.

Waste into Wellbeing (WIW), is a volunteer led project in the heart of Kendal. We’re creating a vibrant and resilient community by bringing people together around good food. Surplus food collected from local supermarkets, shops and eateries which would otherwise be wasted is served as delicious meals in Kendal People’s Café or shared with others through the community larder. We also host a Kendal Community Kitchen, offering training opportunities and social events. Our community and children's cookalongs are all about coming together to share skills, knowledge and good food. Inspiring our community to cook and eat healthier and consider their impact on the planet. As well as these popular events which are open to all, our kitchen is used to enable learning and work experience opportunities for young people and vulnerable adults. Hosted by community-based charity, South Lakes Action on Climate Change towards transition (SLACCtt), WIW is delivering an important environmental impact by providing a solution to reduce food waste, a significant contributor to Green House Gas emissions through landfill. Our Ambition     We aim to respond to climate change and the recommendations of the Kendal Climate Jury, by diverting surplus and waste food In the Kendal area from landfill. Through this, we aim to build social cohesion and improve well-being in Kendal and surrounding areas through the provision of, and education on, good food. We do this by: 1. Operating in a way that helps develop an inclusive, social community around food: providing a welcoming place to eat and enjoy tasty, healthy food, made from the surplus we collect. 2. Offering a community larder to redistribute our collected food to our community, open to all. 3 Reducing food poverty in Kendal by the provision of the above, helping to improve the quality of life, resilience and life chances of our customers and volunteers. 4.Developing an appreciation of good nutrition through education on healthy food, through our outreach programmes with our customers and other community partners. 5. Ensuring our food community is open to all, inclusive and welcoming, by providing a ‘pay as you can model’ while still ensuring our own financial resilience and sustainability.

We now have a thriving after school club and breakfast club.. This will complete the wrap around care that we offer all of our community families. Open to all, not just our school it will give parents, carers and guardians a safe fun and healthy start to the day. Children from as young as 4 and up to 10 years will be able to access this early start breakfast giving the families an opportunity to improve their standards of living and gain employment which at the moment could be some distance from our rural isolated area. It will mean that after a healthy unrushed breakfast our children will be able to concentrate better in school. Learning about food and socialising with other children and adults at breakfast time gives an immense amount of skills, socialising with others to improve their health as they grow up and into adult life. We now provide our Kitchen, our classrooms and our fundraising events with products to improve the quality of care we already give to the children and families of this rurally isolated agricultural community. The involvement ofMarks and Spencer’s Penrith makes our whole school including the families is immense. By providing us with products from their store on a weekly basis means that we can reduce our kitchen budget and provide each class with healthy snacks such as fruit and now also helps our reception and nursery classes with toast in the morning break and gives the children a lot more energy and helps with their concentration during lessons.