Fighting food poverty in Nottingham

The Pitch

Problem statement

We have seen the impact of the very low levels of benefits and low wages in the city over the last few years. It was massively exposed during the covid lockdowns, which despite furlough meant many people in insecure work lost their incomes. Our foodbank went from feeding 40 people a week to 350 people a week. Having such massive growth very quickly meant we had to move premises to a much larger warehouse - but this meant a massive growth in our overheads to match! Nottingham City Council have recently awarded some funding to foodbanks across Nottingham to help us to continue to meet such high needs and from this, we have realised that we are the second biggest foodbank in the city.

Solution

Himmah wants to continue to develop and deliver our two main core areas of work which are about fighting food poverty. Firstly is our foodbank, which provides 4 weeks of food parcels to people in crisis. Secondly, is our Peoples Pantry/Foodprint delivery, which is a social supermarket - people pay on average £1 per kg of food, being able to choose what they want to feed their families healthy and nutricious food. The aim is to move people from the foodbank onto the social supermarkets, so they can manage on a low income and ensure their families do not go hungry. We also then provide debt management and budgeting training, alongside referrals to other support organisations and training.

Why are we best placed to deliver?

We know we are the second biggest foodbank in Nottingham City, from working with Nottingham City Council to deliver the Household Support Fund. We have a large warehouse and also have walk in fridges and freezers, which means we can provide fresh and frozen foods to people in crisis or on low income through our 2 main delivery process - foodbank and social supermarket. Our infrasturture means we can offer a much wider variety of food products including fresh produce, diary, meet and fish rather than the traditional of only providing dried and tinned products. This means we are preventing hunger but also providing a more balanced diet to people in need of our support.

Focus Areas

Delivery plan

Budget breakdown

Beneficiaries

900 people

Expected impact

We will prevent 900 people from going hungry through provision of food parcels that are collected from our warehouse in radford or delivered to them if they cannot get to us (due to disability, age, childcare challenges etc). We will also aim to move at least 50 of these people getting food parcels onto our social supermarket provision, whereby people can choose what they want to buy, which is heavily subsidized food that is redistributed through FareShare or His Church. The food we supply would largely have gone to landfill and is cheaper for us to buy in and means we can sell the products at a heavily reduced price helping people on a low income manage their budget better. We will through this funding be able to buy in 5 tonnes of food - so therefore 5 tonnes less food is going to landfill. We will also provide budgeting/debt management training for 50 people over the course of this delivery and refer 25 people onto other community projects for training and employability support

Track record

We have been providing a foodbank in Nottingham city since 2015 when we registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. We have massively developed our foodbank and now provide over 6000 food parcels a year. Since 2021 we have been developing our social supermarket model, the Peoples Pantry, and now have around 40 customers using this service each week. We also took over another Social Supermarket called FoodPrint that is in another area in Nottingham, when we took this over they had around 30-40 customers a week and now they have over 200 customers each week. We have also worked in partnership with faith groups to develop cooked meal provision for people experiencing homelessness or social exclusion. Prior to covid we had 2 meals a week in different parts of Nottingham (Hyson Green and Lenton). We now continue to run the Hyson Green meal and whilst during lockdowns we couldnt offer a sit down meal as a social eating event, we still cooked and distributed hot meals each week.

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