Sainsbury's Ryde Isle of Wight Union St Local

Feeding Isle of Wight runs a surplus food distribution centre on the Isle of Wight. This was set up to prevent surplus food being returned to the mainland to go into landfill. The aim is to help prevent hunger in an area of high deprivation. We distribute to various food charities on the Island. We also run a food pantry in Cowes from the front of the distribution centre. We offer various wraparound care including a Digital Network Hub.

We are a small, friendly primary school and would like some help making our Early Years play areas more fun! We would like some reading/den structures to shade from the sun. We like to play outdoors as much as possible and need exciting areas to explore. In the past we have given out surplus foods to families who we know are struggling to feed their children.

We have a new Community Fridge Project in St Helens Community Centre, Isle of Wight. We have a fridge and food stand open to everyone and free to use 9am -5pm every day. We are working with local food retailers to collect food which is still within its use by date, but would otherwise be thrown away. This is a volunteer-led community project to reduce food waste. We have recruited and trained local volunteers to manage the Community Fridge and food stand, and have additional volunteers to make food collections. We are working with the support of St Helens Parish Council and St Helens Church. We have registered with Environmental Health, with the charity Hubbub, and have start-up funding from Connect4Communities. We launched in mid-November 2023. We hope that we will reduce food waste, cut our carbon footprint and help our whole community through the cost of living crisis. It is important, in this rural community, to make food available to all, without targeting segments of the community, so as not to stigmatise visitors to the fridge and food stand . In this way we can ensure that those in need in our community- families on low incomes and retired folk on fixed incomes- are not deterred from using the facility. In addition to the fridge project we are starting a Warm Hub, in conjuction with the Living Well team, who already run a Community Cafe one day a week. This means that food we collect can also help resource these projects and provide soup and cake to those in our community at risk of social isolation, and experiencing food poverty. There are over 700 households in St Helens but our projects could also support folk in Nettlestone and Seaview, Brading and Bembridge, giving us a much wider reach.