M&S Blackburn

Blackburn Community Fridge is a free, community-led initiative run in association with Al-Buraq Masjid, bringing people together to share food, reduce waste, and support one another. Whether you have food to give or food to take, everyone is welcome.

Providing an Outdoor Free food stall for local residents living within Audley and Queens Park ward in Blackburn and its surrounding neighborhoods, this scheme is not just for individuals seen as vulnerable but for the whole community to access. The outdoor food stall provides a save haven for families struggling financially or reduce in income due to the Covid-19 crisis, by simply accessing the stall for daily nutrition needs i..e breads, fruits, veg, milk and packed meals like sandwiches and ready meals. The scheme has also started providing food packs going out to parents struggling and to children and young people. Our food sharing scheme is open to all but priority given to families from South Asain, BAME and to individuals living in shelter housing or are rough sleeping. The scheme is always open for various donations, at the moment we are looking at essential items such as hand sanitizers, face coverings, disposable gloves, toiletries for male and female as well as long-life tins of foods, soft drinks, children snacks and anything else that can be used daily. The Community Food Sharing scheme has been running for the past 7 months with the support from volunteers from all walks of life, the scheme has 10 adult volunteers and 20 young volunteers age 16 up to 25's. Please feel free to pop-by the outdoor stall and support this worthy scheme. Additional Notes about the project and its delivery: We havem a dedicated pool of volunteers who take turns in supervising the outdoor food counters with monitoring taking place every half hour ensuring the counter services are clean and the foods on the counter are still edible by checking content or wrapping are still sealed and the foods not staled/ gone off. Volunteers and myself have completed level 2 food hygiene and food safety qualification. The project is registered with the food safety standard and environmental health department with Blackburn council. Important Project notice about regrigerated items. Any refrigerated foods that have been rescued overnight are kept inside a separate tall fridge freezer at the project premises address, foods are kept under 4c -40f, We highly discourage any raw sealed meat product, If we however receive any raw meat products from stores this usually is given out as a food pack on the same evening, storing overnight we check temperature in the bottom freezer drawers to be -18C - 0f. We have thermotiers in both compartments of the tall fridge freezer. When placing refrigerated foods outside on the outdoor counter, we put these item on the 2nd shelve, this is cooler and safer than placing on top shelve, and the refrigerated foods are only on the counter for no more than two hours, majority of the time refrigerated foods go within 20 minutes of placing on the counter, after two hours the food is discarded.

The Billy Project CIC set up Blackburn Community Fridge to distribute fresh food to those in need that would otherwise go to waste. We aim to reduce food waste, aid those facing food hardship and educate people in eating on a budget.