Getir Stirchley

Providing healthy breakfast for our pupils. Providing food items for children of poor families to do cooking during Food Technology lessons

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.

We help individuals and families in a deprived area of South East Birmingham through provision of food, empowerment and providing a safe place to meet and socialize. We assist people through issues such as debt and housing matters and aspects relating to deprivation. We help people to tackle issues of loneliness and isolation, lack of opportunity, poor diet and health problems. Our food bank provides food for people in crisis and links them to appropriate local services. Our Lighthouse group is an informal 'drop-in', providing hospitality, a place to chat, make friends, play games, create handicrafts and enjoy a free lunch. Our Yardley Wood Pantry is a new community food initiative (launching in October 2019) to benefit low-income households in the surrounding area. In exchange for a weekly £3.50 membership fee, a member can choose ten food items from the Pantry shop (based at Yardley Wood Baptist Church) – including a variety of groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables, frozen and refrigerated foods, as well as tinned and packet foods – that would have a retail value of around £20. The Pantry is a project that is so much more than being about food. In consultation with Pantry members and other organisations in the local community, we aim to further benefit members and the wider community by creating supporting projects around the Pantry such as: Money and Debt advice, Job Club, Community Café, Parent/toddler groups and clubs providing food and activities for children during school holidays. We aim to bring community together and encourage the talents, gifts and strengths of people in the community. Our aim is to continually listen to our local community and involve people in the community as much as possible in the running of the projects and how they function. Much of what we do revolves around food. People can help by donating money, food (tins, packets, fruit and veg) and household items to support our projects.