ALDI CAMBRIDGE

FoodCycle is a national charity that builds communities through the power of good food. FoodCycle is based upon the simple idea that waste and poverty should not co-exist and that something powerful can be achieved by cooking and eating together. Every week, volunteers across the country reclaim surplus food destined for the bin. This food is instead cooked into healthy, tasty three-course community meals for vulnerable people.

My partner and I run a Facebook group of 5200+ people where we upload and distribute surplus food from local cafe's/shops and people themselves can upload excess food from their own homes. Please feel free to join our Facebook page to follow our growth, progress or perhaps even come to The Hub and see us! We work with a local preschool which we know through our children to distribute more food around the area in which is resides as it is in a different part of town and therefore opens up to redistribution in another area. We want to expand this to further shops/supermarkets and places to help out local community of Haverhill even more during this cost of living crisis. We operate from Charterhouse Industrial Estate where we have The Hub to enable us to do this in a safer more controlled environment away from our home address so we can focus on the group and increase it beyond it's current capacity with every passing week. We identify people through their locality to Haverhill (surrounding villages included) and their needs are not required to be known as our aim is to save food from going waste, it has the side affect of aiding people within our group too. We do not charge for what we provide however do accept donations towards running costs via a donation bucket and have an Amazon Wishlist for people to purchase items which support the Collections. For us it is about stopping food waste going to landfill and therefore any monetary return to us personally wouldn't sit right with us. We used to collect surplus food and distribute it through the Olio app for Tesco, Iceland and a few other smaller outlets however since January 2023 we have grown from there to use fare share and neighbourly but for us this is only the beginning of something which we want to increase as time goes on. A few Christmas's ago we had an article done on us by a local newspaper, the link for which is below. https://www.suffolknews.co.uk/haverhill/news/scheme-s-food-waste-heroes-help-to-feed-people-in-need-9233684/ We work with our kids preschool (Castlefields) who are part of Neighbourly, to collect from Aldi, lidl, sainsburys, B and Q so that they get all fresh produce/items that can be used within the preschool setting and we distribute what cannot be used there through the Facebook group. This is something that we are keen to continue to do and support. Outside of Neighbourly we also collect from Tesco, Waitrose, Bookers, Co-Op and other smaller shops which have local out reaches.

We are an inclusive church in the heart of Cambridge, serving people on the edge. Throughout the week, our community projects provide affordable food to people struggling to afford the cost of living, create social opportunities for lonely and isolated people, and bring people from all walks of life together to share meals.