WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU RAISING MONEY FOR? 

Hello! We are Heart & Parcel. Heart & Parcel is a local food and education project with national and global reach based in Levenshulme, Manchester. We bring people learning English from all communities together to develop English skills through the medium of food and cooking. See our video above and here to hear directors Hafsa & Clare talk more about it, and to see our online and face to face classes in action! 

We have worked with over 1143 learners over 7 years and have run over 253 classes developing English language skills through food. We have also run 91 catering, workshops, markets, supper clubs and online cookalongs as platforms for our learners to develop and challenge and apply their English language into meaningful functional and everyday skills.

Our first cookbook, COOK EAT WRITE SHARE was created in 2019. We have been so proud of this cookbook. It has reached kitchens all over the world. We printed 1000 copies and due to overwhelming demand and incredible support, we have sold out!

We now need your help to fund another cookbook so that we can continue to share our learner’s delicious recipes, spread the word about Heart & Parcel and raise funds for our ongoing projects.

GREAT! I'M INTERESTED. WHAT WILL MY MONEY BE SPENT ON INITIALLY? 

Your generous contribution on this page would pay for the final process of creating the cookbook – final design, illustration and print. 

We split the fundraising into three manageable stages. We have already been crowdfunding through the following platforms:

STAGE 1. GoFundMe (you raised £3205 - 106 donors) for the Education and creative side of this project, which included the writing workshops, edits, drafts, photo shoots with learners who donated their time, stories and recipes to the book. This also involved the photographer’s fee to photograph 15 women and their delicious dishes in the comfort of their homes, and the first part of the designer's fee. 

STAGE 2. JustGiving via INTOGiving (you raised £2240 - 57 donors) (20% matchfund) for the first part of the design work and the editor's time to organize and develop a fully coherent and logical book, as well as the design costs to really make this publication standout. 

All our other costs of project management, recipe testing, marketing, selling, delivery and distribution is done PRO-BONO by Heart & Parcel staff and volunteers.

STAGE 3. Crowdfunder! (we need £8,003.20)  We now need the FINAL push for illustration (9 portraits), print and paper costs (print spec for transparency):

• 1000 copies
• Thread sewn
• Cover - pantone to one side / ispira 250gsm
• 172 pages
• 240x170mm

 We felt this would be the best space to have a time sensitive and dynamic push for the end!   

Although the total cost (£13,448.20) seems like a lot for a book, this is a book that has been self-published collaboratively with a team of independent creatives (who we want to pay appropriately for their time and expertise) and using good quality materials for a better and more beautiful looking product at the end. 

We also felt it only right that these recipes and stories had this high quality platform from which to celebrate the people who make up Heart & Parcel, and give respect to their recipes, stories and involvement. This cookbook is a legacy  and will continue sharing learner’s incredible recipes that are coming out of our sessions.

OK, HOW WOULD I BE HELPING YOU IF I DONATED TO THE PRINT OF THE BOOK AND NOT TO THE PROJECT DIRECTLY?

Your money would go further with this model. we could make double the money for our project if we can get the money to print the book and publish it to be bought. at cost value, the book is £13.45 per unit to produce. Although the RRP has not been confirmed yet, we plan to sell at slightly higher than our last book (RRP £19) which was half the size and half the recipes. So you can see already how far the money would grow. 

What do we plan to do with the sales? Your generous contributions to facilitate this second cookbook would enable us to sustain our running costs for our project for the next few years. Although we are forever grateful to receive external funding from funding bodies, these just cover actual specific projects and not the day to day general running costs of Heart & Parcel (insurance, accounts, websites, social media, admin, venue hire, session materials, staff). Not having to worry about raising funds for our overheads for the next few years would then enable us to focus on providing further regular sessions for English language learners in and across Manchester to come together and develop their English skills in a relaxed informal and welcoming learning space. 

Making these cookbooks are also the best and most productive, effective and consistent way to support Heart & Parcel’s ongoing work. The sales from these cookbooks will be substantially more resourceful to us than the initial donation,  so you would be supporting us hugely by donating today. 

WHAT IS THE SECOND COOKBOOK, ‘FROM HOME TO HOME’ ABOUT?

This second cookbook, ‘From Home to Home' describes how our
cooking classes bring people into the homes of the women we work with, but also conveys their passage from one home (or country) to another as well as the spread of food knowledge and recipes from one kitchen to another.

In 2020 during lockdown, Heart & Parcel were actually able to reach
more learners than ever through our online cooking and English classes which then developed into our learner-led cookalongs. We met over 800 learners from across the UK and built a new online community, sharing ideas, cooking skills and recipes from our own homes, keeping the important connections alive through food and English language learning when the world was at its most
isolated.

Most of the learners featured in the book found Heart & Parcel during this time. This cookbook exists to showcase all these recipes that have been created, cooked, swapped, taught, learned and shared during the past two years.  

We would like to discuss the idea of learning to cook and in our desire to be realistic we have asked the women who have donated recipes to each write a brief passage on the ways and the whys that they learnt to cook. We provided writing workshops to support our contributors with this.

We have also expanded our cookbook community. This time,we have the kind and generous support of nine amazing well-known and celebrated chefs, cooks, food business owners, food writers and culinary entrepreneurs donating their own comforting recipes and stories to make our book even more exciting and collaborative. See below for all the faces of our cookbook! 

This new edition would enable us to sustain our everyday running costs and our ability to provide regular projects for English language learners to come together and develop their English skills in a relaxed, informal and welcoming learning space.  

Your generous donations will help ensure the continuation of our work, and allow us to keep sharing Heart & Parcel’s message through these fabulous recipes.

See recent press about it all here: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/hundreds-lives-been-changed-levenshulme-24495372

WHO ARE YOU EXACTLY AND WHAT IS YOUR IMPACT?
We are a local food and education project with national and global reach based in Levenshulme, Manchester. We've been running for 5 years providing free informal and relaxed English and cooking classes for any English language learners who need a supportive, nurturing and safe environment to practice their everyday English language skills. Due to our approach and nature of our work, we work primarily with women and those who cannot access government run ESOL classes due to their restrictive eligibility.

So we work with all communities, refugees, asylum seekers, unemployed and those who have difficulty physically accessing classes. We have worked with over 1143 learners over 7 years and have run over 253 classes developing English language skills through food. We have also run 91 catering, workshops, markets, supper clubs and online cookalongs as platforms for our learners to develop and challenge and apply their English language into meaningful functional and everyday skills. We’ve watched people join us and go onto create their own groups, businesses and small food ventures, as well as getting into further volunteering opportunities, paid work and further study.




CAN I HAVE MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE ORIGINAL COOKBOOK?

Our first cookbook was a result of an English and cooking project where learners came together to develop their English writing skills through writing recipes, talking about them and sharing them with each other.

The book was self published using a group of creatives: photographer, designers , editor and lots of volunteer recipe testers and the women taking part to create a beautiful finished product which documents the delicious dishes, lives and stories of the women Heart & Parcel works with. You can see more here: HEART & PARCEL COOKBOOK We did a print run of 1000 of the first edition and due to the overwhelming popularity we have sold out. We have had over 15 stockists who have stocked the book ranging from art & cinema cultural institutions to restaurants, local bars, shops and cafes across England and in Japan.

100% cookbook sales went back into our project, generating further provision for people learning English from different communities across Manchester.

WHERE CAN I READ MORE ABOUT YOUR PROJECT?

• You can read more about our project here: https://heartandparcel.org/
• You can read about our research and impact
• reports on each of our projects here: https://heartandparcel.org/category/research/
• You can see what other people have been saying
• about our work here: https://heartandparcel.org/category/press/