ALDI CARDIFF - DARTINGTON DRIVE

ROUCA - Romanian Organisation for Community Advancement supports Romanian families in Cardiff through cultural education, children’s Saturday school, and women’s empowerment. We need food surplus donations to provide healthy snacks and meals to children and young mothers attending our weekly programs. We are the only registered Romanian organisation in Wales. We work tirelessly to support Romanian families and children in Cardiff through education, culture, empowerment and community-building. At the heart of our work is the Romanian School in Cardiff, open every Saturday during term time. We offer a warm, inclusive environment where children aged 2 and over, especially those from mixed British-Romanian backgrounds, can learn the Romanian language, traditions and values through storytelling, crafts, singing, games, literacy workshops and healthy shared meals. Every session includes a nourishing snack to support their concentration, growth and wellbeing. Our newly launched after-school Lego Lunch Club provides children with a hot lunch followed by engaging activities like chess, sewing, reading club and team games, promoting both learning and community spirit. We are also deeply committed to supporting young mothers and women in our community. Our GLOW Women of Romania network offers parenting workshops, mental health support, creative activities, and integration assistance. Sessions like “Crochet & Coffee” provide women a safe and friendly space to relax, learn, and connect with others navigating similar life paths. ROUCA also hosts traditional Romanian events, book clubs, youth volunteering programmes and integration workshops for newcomers to the UK. We help families access vital services, understand the British education system, and prepare for the Life in the UK test. These services are free of charge and powered entirely by volunteers. As a non-profit community interest company, our work depends on the goodwill of our volunteers and the generosity of our community partners. We are currently seeking food surplus donations to help us provide nutritious snacks and occasional meals for children attending the Romanian School and mothers participating in our weekly workshops. These contributions help families facing food insecurity while also reducing food waste. Our vision is to build a stronger, united and culturally enriched community. We believe every child deserves a healthy start, every mother deserves support, and every person deserves to feel a sense of belonging, regardless of where they come from. Food surplus donations would help us ensure that no child or parent ever feels left out or goes home hungry. Thank you for helping us grow this vision. Together, we can make Wales a warmer, more inclusive place for all.

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.

We live at an independent living scheme for over 55's, we are mostly disabled and have health problems. St Clements is a complex of 34 studio and 1 bed flats, formerly it was an assisted living complex, now it has been reassigned as “independent living” We collect food from Neighbourly which we share out to those who need it and we hold a coffee morning every other week and bingo every week. We also garden together and enjoy sitting and chatting out in our lovely communal gardens. Many of our residents are on low incomes so we can help them out with the donated food. It was once livelier and had more social activities, but these have sadly diminished due entirely to the ages and infirmities of the residents and post pandemic etc. Most of the residents are disabled or have long-term illnesses. We aren't the best at social media so there aren't many photographs but the one thing the majority of the residents briefly come out of their homes for is food! The food is so looked forward to, men will often ask if there are any cakes. It makes us happy that they have food. The food has brought people in our complex together and when they come to get their food they chat to each other. Sometimes when we get a lot of bread produce from M&S we take surplus to St Vincent’s de Paul ( a charity for the homeless) the shop is situated in a very underprivileged area, so bread donations are gone within the hour.