An alliance of charities including Oxfam, Quaker Action, CPAG, Trussell Trust and many more have joined together to launch a campaign to raise awareness of food poverty in the UK. The campaign runs through to March next year and is all about stimulating conversation and discussion about the issues of food poverty and highlighted existing and new solutions to the problem: http://endhungeruk.org/
Hope is proud to support the campaign, alongside and as part of the Northamptonshire Food Poverty Network. Food poverty is just a shorthand of course for poverty as a whole; people choose to eat rather than heat their homes, for example, but the problem is poverty generally – not enough money to support basic needs, which pretty much everyone we see experiences very day. The difference is with food poverty, those who have some can’t share their electricity with those who have not, but we can all share the food we buy, as I talked about last blog about harvest; and we can avoid or re-use food that would otherwise go to waste, on short sell-by or use-by dates. In these ways we can channel food to people who need it and start to make a difference on this topic.
Food is of course crucial to Hope’s mission – we were created to address hunger and we do so, every day, to a hundred people or more; we also train people through Hope Catering how to be involved in cooking, and use food as a force for good through this business.
We are developing new solutions to food hunger at Hope: we are working on a food club or co-operative whereby we will sell donated, short life and off-production food at massively discounted rates to people in proven need, through food distribution points developed in partnership with Northampton Partnership Homes. We plan to grow food to put into those deliveries using a new social enterprise, Hope Gardening. Little steps, but by supporting events that the food poverty network organises, which Hope will be involved in, all helps.
