12-Hour Improvathon for ND Hub Gloucestershire

Aim

Help us launch ARFID Food Pantries in Gloucestershire, making safe foods more affordable and accessible for neurodivergent families.

I know what it’s like to stand in a supermarket and know that feeding yourself or your child isn’t as simple as choosing what’s affordable, healthy or on offer.

For people living with ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), food can be complicated. A particular brand, texture, flavour or even packaging can be the difference between being able to eat and going without. A previously safe food can suddenly become impossible. Trying something new can mean spending money on food that simply can’t be eaten.

And that gets expensive.

At ND Hub Gloucestershire, we hear these experiences from our community, and we believe the people living with a problem are often the best people to help find the solution.

So, together, we're developing something practical: an ARFID Food Pantry.

We want to create a place where people can access safe and familiar foods, try alternatives without the financial risk of buying a whole pack, and share unopened foods that haven't worked for them with someone for whom they might be exactly right.

We're starting small, in Tewkesbury and the Forest of Dean. We need a decent fridge-freezer, our first stock of safe foods and enough funding to learn what works alongside the people who will actually use it.

That's why this Improvathon matters to us.

Every laugh, every performer and every donation could help us turn an idea created with our community into something real,  something that makes the weekly food shop a little less expensive, a little less stressful and a lot less lonely.

And if our pilot works, we want to take what we learn and grow it across Gloucestershire.

Sometimes meaningful change doesn't begin with a huge programme.

Sometimes it begins with a fridge-freezer, a shelf of safe food, and somebody saying, “We understand. What would actually help?”

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 7th October 2026 at 8:06pm