M&S Cardiff Capital Home

We love our city of Cardiff. We believe eliminating food poverty is within our grasp. We believe that empowering individuals, and groups to believe that their simple contribution can make a huge difference, is key. Food poverty is a reality. It’s in every corner of society. A common topic of conversation in our communities and culture. Frequently discussed, researched, investigated, but it continues. At Food4All we operate to make it simple for any willing volunteers to bring food to anyone who can benefit from it. Our volunteers might work in schools, volunteer with community groups, support those elderly or vulnerable, work within schools, mosques, churches, leisure centres! The list goes on and whether big or small, we simply help them all. Volunteers register with the Food4All leadership team. We discuss their community involvement and agree on a weekly plan of food collections. The volunteers are then linked with individual local stores, and supported by the Food4All team to collect donated food on a weekly basis. As a team of around 30 volunteers, we all work together to share, support and encourage. We work 365 days of the year. We support Food Banks, support schools by supplying food for their breakfast clubs, parent cookery classes; food for pensioners in retirement accommodation, asylum seekers and refugees as well as families in need who have vulnerable family members and much more, together reaching hundreds of households each week in Cardiff and the surrounding areas. We are grateful for every single crate, every loaf of bread, every bag of salad, every croissant! Each item represents our opportunity and hope that in sharing, maybe, just maybe one person that day will have a reason to hope. That they would know they are not alone, and that they too would have a hope for the future. Throughout the week: Free food available to the community from Al-Ikhlas Mosque, Cardiff, where individuals and families come together and help themselves to whatever they need in a warm and friendly environment. Deliver food parcels to the breakfast club in Splott as well as a the Star centre. Also providing vital food supplies to those in need in the Ely area of Cardiff via the Dusty Forge and St Vincent's Church. Providing food to support parents at cookery classes and the breakfast club at Cathays High School, supporting families in need. Supporting individuals and families in need in the deprived inner city areas of Cardiff (Splott, Adamsdown and Tremorfa) by delivering directly to the Mosques to support their food markets as well as individual families. Saturday: Fortnightly free food markets running in Llanishen. Supported by Llanishen Baptist church and Llanishen Catholic Church. Providing essential food support for pensioners in Llanbradach, Rhondda Cynon Taff. Free food open to the community from both Al Manar and Mosque Omar where people come together and help themselves to whatever they need.

Our group was set up in 2010 by a group of mums who wanted to do more for our kids on our estate. We do a range of events throughout the year and trips. We try to raise funds through our events but as most of us are on low incomes this isn't easy. We have lots of families on our estate being affected by the switch over to Universal Credit so they will be very glad of help with donated food. We can also use the donated food to promote health eating to families and teach people how to cook. One of our volunteers dawn trained as a cook so she is happy to lead on this, We work closely with Wales & West Housing, ACE (Action for Caerau & Ely) and the Hub.

We are all aged 55 plus, all with abilities and different needs. Our oldest resident is 97. We live at Western Court - a Wales & West Housing independent living scheme in Cardiff which is a bus trip or taxi journey to the nearest supermarket. Also many of us are on pension income and only one resident is in paid employment so being able to access the surplus Lidl food at our scheme will make a huge difference to us. We can use any funds we raise to help put on our social activities, which get us out of our homes and stop us feeling lonely and isolated. To help combat loneliness and isolation we get together to cook and eat meals together. so the food from Lidl will be used in this way. We arrange social activities to get us together at our scheme, most of which include food. We hold a coffee morning twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays to get us together in our communal lounge. We also have other seasonal and personal celebrations too such as cream teas and fish and chips. and garden parties. Welcome people from our wider community and have lots of friends, neighbours and support organisations / agencies visiting our scheme and joining our activities. Our gardening club members have transformed our gardens from a plain lawns into a lovely productive and beautiful gardens. We work with Love Where You live on our gardens. We run our garden on contributions from residents but it is hard to manage on these contributions alone. If you or your staff would like to do any volunteer days at our community garden we would be very glad of your help, especially in the spring. Our main gardeners are all disabled so they would be very glad of help with some of the heavier gardening tasks. How you can help us: Our activities run on a shoestring so as well as the surplus food donations, we would be very grateful for any of the following broken bags for our community garden: • compost • stone chippings • wood chippings • barbeque coals Also we would love to receive any surplus: • cut flowers, including the flower buckets – these are great for growing tomatoes and cucumbers in! • plants / multipacks of plants that are worse for wear • out of date seeds and bulbs • plant pots • any other gardening materials or equipment We could collect these items as often as is needed – see below for our contact details. We have been told that these items are normally put in the bin so to prevent these items going into the landfill would be good for everyone. We try and raise some funds by holding occasional raffles and knitting for charities/ Samaritans Purse for children abroad for Christmas so we would also be very glad of: • anything that we could raffle • any knitting equipment or materials * any soaps / toothpaste / toothbrushes /flannels/ toiletries/ childrens' toys