Community Food Hub

Aim

The overriding objectives of our food hub is to reduce food waste and also bring an end to the food poverty in our city.

The community food hub is an initiative of Freedoms Ark Church, an independent church in Tottenham, North London.  It is run in conjunction with the Peace Alliance charity and supported by the Felix Project, M and S, and other organisations who provide us with a regular supply of food. The hub was launched in April 2019 with the main objective of reducing food waste and ending food poverty/crisis in our community. This is done by collecting excess or surplus food from mainly supermarkets and redistributing the same to the most vulnerable in the community. There are also other individuals and organisations who have partnered with us to provide food for the community. 

The hub initially provided food to a few families weekly. However, we now have over 3,000 users on our database and the hub is open 4 days a week. The pandemic also contributed to the exponential rise in numbers as many families are struggling with little or no income. At present, we are the largest food hub in Haringey.

By providing food, our service users can apply income to provide for their other necessities thus relieving the extra burden of buying food especially for large families. 

The food hub has two coordinators and other volunteers who undertake various responsibilities from the collection of food, setting up and cleaning the halls used, ensuring any leftover food is safely stored, and distributing the food to the service users. The hub provides both fresh and frozen food including ready meals, vegetables, cereals, snacks, and a variety of other food items.

In addition, we also act as a one-stop shop to signpost users to other local services as appropriate where they can get help for other issues and learn to maximise their income to become self - sufficient. These include mental health services, job centres, homeless shelters, etc.

We also aim to encourage our service users to eat healthy and also maximise the food items received from the hub to make as many meals as it is possible.  

For the hub to run smoothly and for the foreseeable future, there are significant running costs involved including van maintenance, employing full time staff including drivers and volunteer co-ordinators, purchasing PPE and the rent, which is the biggest overhead. The funds raised will go towards alleviating these costs. 

This project successfully funded on 14th July 2021