Help Provide Meals & Cooking Classes this Winter

This winter, we are raising money to provide additional meals & cooking opportunities for people living in food poverty - in order to alleviate the impact of the winter fuel payment cuts & ongoing cost of living challenges. We also want to complete the transformation of our second Community Kitchen site in Manchester city centre!

Help us raise £50k this winter to achieve both objectives by pledging meals, purchasing one of our fundraising gifts that give twice or signing up for one of our corporate sponsorship packages!

Fighting Food Poverty since 2014

This November marks our 10-year anniversary as an organisation. Bounceback Food CIC is a social enterprise fighting food poverty on multiple fronts. Our Community Cookery School teams teach people how to cook, run food bank drives at market events, help people get jobs in the food sector and coordinate community meal drives that provide emergency meals for our beneficiaries.

Our mission to fight food poverty has become even more urgent in light of the recent winter fuel payment cuts and ongoing cost of living challenges, with food insecurity levels and food bank usage at record levels. Here are just a few of the reasons why food poverty continues to matter in the UK:

• Since 2018, there has been a 49% increase in the number of children who are dependent on food banks in the UK. (Source: Environmental Audit Committee’s Hunger, Food Insecurity and Malnutrition in the UK Report)
• 3% of families in the UK - at least 2.1 million people - used a food bank in the year to March 2023. (Source: The Trussell Trust)
• Almost 90% of independent food banks reported increased demand in January 2023 compared with a year earlier. (Source: The Independent Food Aid Network - Ifan)

Our Social Impact

Since 2014 we have taught 9,500+ people how to cook, including stroke survivors, young carers, food bank beneficiaries and elderly people living in sheltered accommodation. We have also secured 20,000+ donations to food banks and generated over 250,000 meals for people in need via our catering, community meal drives and cookery workshops.

Prior to the pandemic our outreach work was mainly delivered in the North West, Wales and Cheshire but given the increasing scale of food poverty and the cost of living challenges, we've since been focused on building an organisation capable of helping people across the country.

Expanding Nationwide

We are now working on our 15-year anniversary (2029) development plan that will see Bounceback Food CIC having 20 teams operating in the UK’s largest towns and cities in the UK and be supporting people living in food poverty by:

• Ensuring their nearest foodbank is stocked with good quality items of food & hygiene products.
• Providing them with the opportunity to learn how to cook for free and supporting them with career progression in the food industry.
• Providing free hot nutritious meals from/via permanent Community Kitchens.
• Enabling them to learn about cooking, budgeting, nutrition, meal planning, reducing food waste, gain accredited skills and book on to cooking classes with the provision of free access to our Cooking & Nutrition Portal.

Our central team, freelancers and volunteers are all now focussed on achieving these goals.

We are always looking for volunteers to support the development of our organisation too and so if you'd like to support us in that way keep an eye on our social media (Facebook, Instagram & LinkedIn) or sign up to our mailing list to stay updated.

What Will the Money be Used For?

Target 1: Meal Drives, & Cookery Workshops in Warm Hubs

Our first target of £25,000 will raise the funds required to:

• Prep, cook and distribute an additional 5,000 hot nutritious meals to our beneficiaries during the winter. 
• Deliver 8 additional cookery workshops to our beneficiaries in greatest need during the winter period - to provide further meals, improve financial wellbeing, increase cooking confidence and reduce social isolation at this critical time of year.

Target 2: Community Kitchen 2 & Service Expansion  

If we hit our first target, we will then aim to raise an additional £25,000 which will enable us to: 

• Complete the transformation of our second Community Kitchen site in Manchester city centre! We want to install a catering kitchen, make the space accessible, complete internal work to the cookery class space and open up a retail hatch to the public! Opening this second Community Kitchen site will significantly increase the number of meals, cooking classes and learning programmes that our team can provide for our beneficiaries.
• Prep, cook and distribute all additional pledged meals on top of our first target.
• Deliver additional cookery workshops to our beneficiaries in greatest need across the UK during the winter period.

Make an Impact this Winter

Choose from our range of crowdfunding rewards that enable you to pledge meals directly, fund community cookery classes or support the wider work of our non-profit organisation by purchasing one of our fundraising gifts that give twice!

Our exciting range of fundraising gifts, also sold via our online shop and at market events, are helping us to counter the financial challenges created by the pandemic and build a strong nationwide non-profit organisation capable of meeting the increased demand for our services.

With your support, we will be able to tackle food poverty on a much bigger scale across the UK this winter and improve the financial wellbeing of our beneficiaries.