Sainsbury's Burpham

Zero Hunger is a community-led food movement dedicated to reducing food insecurity, preventing loneliness, and tackling food waste across Hart, Rushmoor, Basingstoke & Deane and surrounding areas. We provide access to quality surplus food through our community outreach venues, helping individuals and families facing financial hardship while also creating welcoming, safe spaces where people can connect and feel supported. Our work helps save tonnes of perfectly good food from going to waste each year and redistributes it directly back into the community. We currently serve between 400 to 500 people and week. Alongside food support, we actively promote wellbeing, inclusion, and community engagement through volunteer opportunities and local partnerships. Our volunteers — known as Food Heroes — are at the heart of everything we do and help us create a positive, non-judgemental environment for everyone who accesses our services. We are always grateful for support in the form of surplus food donations, volunteers, and community partnerships. Additional support allows us to expand our outreach, reach more vulnerable people, and continue building stronger, healthier communities where no one goes hungry or feels alone.

Zero Carbon Guildford is a Charity based in Guildford set up in 2022. Originally run entirely by volunteers, we now employ some members of staff as the project has grown. We have set up a Community hub, offering a physical space for all local environmental and social groups and projects to come together to tackle the climate and ecological crisis, and the social issues which share the same root causes as climate breakdown. Zero has set up a Community Fridge at its premises in Guildford - the first Community Fridge in the town. Our primary focus is to stop food waste. Food is freely available to all members of the local community, no referral necessary, but we make sure that those in need are aware of the Fridge and work closely with other groups and refuges. Other projects run by Zero include Rosamund Community Garden, Library of Things, River Testing, Baby Clothes Library, Home Energy Surveys, The Sustainable Business Network, Terracycle, Urban Greening. We work closely with the University of Surrey and other environmental groups.

The Meeting Place was founded in 2011 with the principle aim of reducing social isolation. A coffee shop was set up in January 2012 with soft play facilities to encourage young mums and child carers to come in and stay as long as they liked. The older generation also enjoyed coming into a place where there was no time pressure. Since that time we have started up a language hub to assist those whose English is a second language and may be struggling in confidence and finding friends. We have also arranged lip reading classes for those struggling with communicating as deafness begins to limit them. In 2019 The Meeting Place agreed with the idea of having a Community Fridge, principally to reduce food waste, to be available at the times the Coffee Shop was open, initially this started on a small scale in January 2020. When the Coronavirus situation changed peoples lives we felt that we wanted to support the people who had been using the Fridge by delivering a bag of food to their door. This has grown from supporting 20 Families in March to over 170 at the present time. Most of our growth has resulted from professional referrals due to financial hardship or shielding.