ALDI KINGS NORTON - REDDITCH RD

Our 0rganisation works with Men, Women, Young People, Elderly and The Homeless, by supporting them in all different areas, clothing, toiletries, personal hygiene, food items and providing them a hot drink and a meal. We are also starting up a Breakfast Club on Saturday, for the Elderly, and people from the disadvantaged group, due to the demand for something in the Birmingham area on Saturday mornings. And finally we are wanting to start up a foodbank for single mothers and fathers that have a partner in prison and are struggling to feed their families.

Reducing the cost of living by reducing food waste. Surplus food is distributed by a team of volunteers during 2 sessions each week on Thursday evenings and Friday mornings. We have been operating for 36 months now and have seen our numbers rise from 22 on the first week to now providing for over 90 service users at our highest point. We operate by serving anyone that lives within our Parish boundary. Our main criteria when we started was 'to reduce food waste' and while we continue to promote that philosophy we now support many families who are experiencing difficulties including food poverty, hygiene product deficiency have physical difficulties and/or suffer mental health issues. We liaise with Bromsgrove District Council Community Partnership Manager who supports and advises ourselves and with BARN, the Bromsgrove and Redditch Network who are the local charity network. We operate from Alvechurch Baptist Church who allow us to use their premises on a minimal cost basis. We charge £4 per visit and for that we guarantee everyone a minimum of £30 pounds worth of food from a 'designated table' as well as other food from our 'fruit and vegetable table', our 'free products' table and our 'toiletries/health products' table. We are applying for grants to keep our costs to a minimum. Experience tells us a small charge encourages less well of clients to feel at ease without any stigma. Were a non-profit community organisation. Through links with Bromsgrove District Community Partnership we are able to arrange visits by parties offering a range of services, eg. 1. 'Act on Energy', offering advice on energy saving schemes 2. 'Fire Service', offering home safety advice and follow up visits 3. Local counsellors surgeries, etc. 4. Police surgeries 5. Monthly surgeries from BDHT, (Bromsgrove District Housing Trust). 6. Fortnightly visits from Citizens Advice Also we have a designated 'listener' at every session who are available to speak with our customers. All listeners have received training via CA. We are members of Fareshare and receive donations from them. We have had many articles in 'The Village' which is our local community magazine which is published each month. We also had an 'info stall' at 'Picnic in the Park' and 'Rowney Green Fete' which are our annual local summer fetes. We partner with other community organisations in the area and are actively supported by Bromsgrove District Council and by BARN, (see above). We have a Parish Councillor on our committee and are well supported by our district councillors. We have been in to our local school to do assemblies about food waste and food poverty, worked with our local Co-op Community Champion to facilitate a Xmas pyjama distribution scheme and are working with 2 local farm animal rescue centres to ensure that any food that is left over that cannot be kept/frozen is distributed to them to further prevent food going to landfill.

FoodCycle runs volunteer-powered community projects across the UK – all working to reduce food poverty and social isolation by serving tasty, nutritious meals to vulnerable people. Since we started cooking in May 2009, our incredible volunteers have served over 125,000 meals made using over 146,000kg of surplus food – the equivalent saving of 657,000kg CO2 emissions.