ALDI SAFFRON WALDEN

We are a community wellbeing project in Essex serving West Essex and East Herts. We are based at Crafton Green, Stansted Mountfitchet, next door to the library and the Crafton Green car park. We have a welcoming community café and garden. From our centre people are also able to access help and support from our partner organisations, join clubs and interest groups, and share their skills with others. We also run a Community Food Share project in up to 6 different locations every week helping to reduce the amount of food going to waste and a NEW community radio station to further connect our community. For TouchPoint Foodshares please check the website for up to date information for locations and times. https://www.thetouchpoint.org/the-touchpoint-community-food-share/ TouchPoint Foodshare distributes food surplus for free to everyone that attends. By welcoming everyone it removes barriers and we thank the visitors for saving food from going into landfill. TouchPoint distributes for free 8Mt-10Mts a month. The total valuer of the food distributed during 2025 was approximately £500,000. The average value of a bag of groceries from TouchPoint Foodshare is £26.50. If a visitor attends a weekly foodshare every week throughout the year they can save over £1300 from the grocery bill annually. TouchPoint Active runs a range of sessions each week, from bootcamps to yoga, chair-based exercise to running. All sessions are free and accessible to all. Our “give what you can ” system enables those who wish to donate to do so. The sessions are held by fully qualified instructors and are suitable for all abilities. Check the website for up to date information of times and locations. https://www.thetouchpoint.org/touchpoint-active/ The TouchPoint Community Café is open every Thursday from 10am to 5pm, and every Friday from 8.30am to 12pm, and is a welcoming place to catch up with friends and relax. We serve a selection of hot and cold drinks and snacks, with hot food available on Thursdays between 12.30pm and 2.30pm, and free breakfast served on a Friday between 9am and 10am. Tea, coffee and squash are FREE, and cakes and snacks are available to buy. We also have a ‘Pay it Forward’ donation box if you would like to make a contribution.

Our Mission Fripps Farm was founded in 2020 by Jodie Marsh, former glamour model, bodybuilder and documentary maker. Jodie had wanted an animal sanctuary her whole life and it was her mum’s passing that made her realise that life is too short and that she needed to get on and do it and so it began. It snowballed very quickly, starting with some dogs and a couple of goats to where we are now with over 250 animals. Jodie will take any animal that needs a home. Jodie’s aim is to give animals the best possible life, catering for all their needs and also to give them the love that they need. Jodie has saved many animals from slaughter and she plans to save lots more!! Jodie will take the animals that no one else wants and Fripps Farm has been the last resort for many of the animals here, when nobody else would take them. Fripps Farm adheres to the 5 freedoms of animal welfare act which is globally recognised as the gold standard in animal welfare, meaning the animals get everything they could possibly need to keep them healthy and happy. If for any reason Fripps Farm can’t home an animal then Jodie will find it the best possible home. Fripps Farm is now a C.I.C (Community Interest Company) which is similar to having charity status. We are officially recognised as being a “service to the community” (to animals and wildlife). It means that we can receive donations and help with funding. It also means that we are very transparent and that our accounts must show where the money is being spent. The money we receive MUST go on the cause! Jodie and all the animals are SO grateful for all the help they have received so far from Jodie’s followers. Jodie always says she couldn’t do it without her followers!

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.