Sainsbury's Leyton Midland Stn Local

We are a Community Centre based in Walthamstow that runs projects focusing on a community response to social and environmental issues. On Mondays, we run a Solidarity Supermarket where people can buy around £25 worth of groceries for £4.50. On Tuesdays, we run a free community kitchen where we cook surplus food and invite people to enjoy a free meal. Through our partners The Gleners, a Community Living Room runs every Thursday, plus their How To Cook A Feast course for migrants in the local area. On Fridays, we have a Wellbeing Cafe for people experiencing social isolation. We also redistribute food to local community fridges, food cooperatives, food banks and housebound individuals through our food hub and redistribution network. We have a network of volunteers who collect surplus food on their bikes from local shops and businesses, and are looking to expand this and engage with more local businesses to collect and redistribute their surplus food. When it comes to food waste management, we collaborate with local allotments that take our uncooked food. Just recently, we have launched our Green Hub For Waltham Forest, bringing together local groups involved in sustainability and responding to the climate emergecy.

The Leytonstone Community Fridge is a Transition Leytonstone project, working in partnership with The Community Fridge Network. We are working to reduce food waste at a local level by collecting food donations from charities, food businesses and individuals, making the food available to the public without discrimination, The Fridge, which is situated outside the Leytonstone Methodist Church, is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, from 12 noon until the food runs out. It gets very busy, especially during the first half hour, and is manned entirely by volunteers. We need a steady stream of new stall volunteers and driver volunteers, as people do have other things in their lives! That said, we are a happy community of food waste warriors, who love nothing better than saving food from landfill and composting. A very recent 3-monthly audit shows that we saved two and a half tonnes from landfill between February and April 2019. We are currently fundraising for solar panels to power our 2nd backup fridge and a freezer in our food storage garage.

Although we started in London, we have been offering Counselling in Croydon since 2015 and currently based in Croydon. We will now like to support our community more by supporting with practical advice and tools like food via weekly wellbeing support groups / workshops to the Croydon Community. In Croydon 1 in 6 adults (67,000 people) has a mental health condition at any one time, this is costly to the wards, borough and wider society and 1 in 4 young people are struggling with emotional trauma and mental health problems. We will like to support local familes, schools, young people and their parents / main carer to be more resilient, motivated, and empowered to make right decisions and have positive outlook on their future. During this pandemic of Covid19, there is a massive fear of shortage of food, affecting the community and families we offer emotional health support to. We are still offering Psychotherapy / Counselling support by offering email counselling, telephone counselling and face to face via Zoom. We will like to still support families emotionally and practically by supporting with food.