No One Should Go Hungry

Karmabank's community kitchen and food bank operates weekly throughout the year to support people facing food poverty in Hastings, St Leonard's and surrounding areas. Our volunteers put together large shopping bags of surplus food (and some supplemented) to feed themselves and their families at home.

Karmabank also offers a hot, nutritious three-course nutritious meal, enjoyed  on long communal trestle tables, where we offer a warm welcome and kindness. Karmabank is one of a few community organisations around the town who in different ways, on different days, work together to support some of the people who need our help.

Each week, 65 shopping bags are filled with quality-controlled surplus food generously donated to us by supermarkets, wholesalers and restaurants.  A typical bag might hold 4-5 types of vegetables, 1-2 varieties of fruit, 1-2 dry goods (flour, rice, pasta), 1-2 tins, plus pastries, cake, bread, rolls and sometimes additional toiletries.

The three-course meal is created from the surplus food donated to us, with our volunteer chefs conjuring up a menu based on what appears on the day.

Our guests are referred to us by various local organisations, with nearly 300 on our books – and up to 70 come to us each Thursday. They are in housing (much of the surplus food we offer needs cooking) and they come from many different backgrounds, from life-long residents of Hastings to Syrian refugees, Ukranian families fleeing the war, elderly people... They may be single people living alone, small groups or multi-generational family groups. We have a number of members who work receiving minimum wage who struggle to afford to buy enough fresh fruit and vegetables to eat a balanced and nutritious diet. Our members sit together, eat together and swap their stories and.. sometimes, the contents of their shopping bags 😃

By using surplus food we not only help those facing food poverty but also help the environment; by keeping food out of landfill we have avoided production of 60 tonnes of carbon since we started in 2022. 

The bag-packing, cooking, the serving, the set-up and pack-down in the wonderful space in Concordia Hall is all done by volunteers - we have over 50 on our books with up to 25 involved on a typical Thursday.

We run on a shoestring; our costs (hall rent, freezer storage, Fareshare deliveries, kitchen supplies etc.) total only around £1,000 per month.

Since we started in 2022, we have relied primarily on donations for our funding. We now ask our guests for a donation of £2 for their shopping bag and meal, which enables us to buy additional supplemented items such as toiletries etc..

And we are certainly not expecting any reduction in the demand for our community support - quite the reverse! While Hastings is a great place to live, work and visit, like many coastal towns it also has a set of unique challenges. Hastings remains the 13th most deprived town in England with a quarter of children living in poverty – and not everyone in Hastings enjoys a good quality of life and the same opportunities as each other, or elsewhere.

We are asking today for your support to keep us going:

• If we can achieve £6,000 we will be able to carry on as we are now for another six months
• If we can achieve £12,000+, we can look at getting a dedicated van and rdriver, so we can rescue more surplus food and offer more warm and welcoming hot lunches to more people facing food poverty
• If we can benefit from regular donations, we can start to plan for the longer term. We see no reason to believe that the people of Hastings and St Leonards won’t need us for some time to come

In a nutshell...

WE ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT REDUCING FOOD WASTE, ADDRESSING FOOD POVERTY, CHAMPIONING HEALTHY EATING AND SUPPORTING THE COMMUNITY

All donations - big and small – make a difference.

Many thanks!

Love and Gratitude,

Karmabank x