It's More Than Just A Meal: SYM Community Kitchen

Watch How Meals, Skills, and Hope Are Rebuilding Lives   

Who We Are

Shifting Your Mindset is a grassroots, community-led organisation based in Hyson Green, one of Nottingham’s most deprived areas.  Our core belief is that a true community is built on compassion, humility and care. It takes a village to raise a child, and a whole community to help someone regain their footing. We are committed to more than just providing temporary relief; for us, it’s about creating sustainable change, supporting people facing poverty, homelessness, trauma, and exclusion. Our mission is to empower individuals, especially men, fathers, and families facing crisis, by equipping them with the tools, skills, knowledge, and support they need to rebuild their lives, achieve financial independence, and contribute to stronger, more resilient communities.  When individuals are empowered, the ripple effect uplifts families, neighbourhoods, and generations.

Why We Are Crowdfunding

We are currently at a critical turning point. Our Community Kitchen serves over 230 people each week and provides more than 10,000 meals a year, is at a risk of closure. We currently have no funding to continue providing meals or sustaining our vital wraparound support services.  Without immediate help, we cannot keep our doors open to those who rely on us for food, hope, skills, dignity, and the opportunity to rebuild their lives.  Your support can help us continue offering hot meals and services that empower individuals to create lasting change. Please help us keep this vital lifeline alive. Every donation, no matter the size, makes a difference.

More Than Just a Meal — Rebuilding a Community 

Our mission is driven by passion and inspired by lived experience. Our founder's journey began with her personal struggles with homelessness, depression, and isolation. These experiences motivated her to support others, starting from her front garden. What started as hardship has transformed into a powerful sense of purpose: to create a space rooted in love, humility, and a deep belief in every person's ability to change.

 Today, our community kitchen serves over 230 people each week, providing hot meals and a place where individuals can feel seen, safe, supported, and connected to the community. This is a nurturing, trauma-informed environment where everyone is treated with dignity. Although our Community Kitchen initially focused on offering meals to low-income families and individuals, our mission quickly expanded to address the deeper needs of our community. Here, trust is built, compassion is shared, and healing begins not through formal services but through genuine human connection around the table.

What We Offer — All Under One Roof :

• Hot, nutritious meals aimed at reducing food poverty
• One-on-one assistance with budgeting, housing, benefits, and mental health
• Peer-led emotional support and informal "kitchen conversations" to combat isolation
• Accredited volunteering opportunities in collaboration with local organisations
• Employment pathways through established partners like INFRA-GEOPAV
• Food parcels and outreach support in partnership with Himmah

Why We Are Different

Our wraparound approach offers something different in a city where statutory services are overstretched, and families continue to fall through the cracks. It is simple, human, relatable and rooted in community care. We prioritise connection over ticking boxes and trust over targets.  We have seen isolated individuals transform simply because someone believed in them, listened without judgment, and gave them a space where they did not have to pretend to be okay.

Our team reflects the diversity and lived experiences of the individuals we support. Many of our staff and volunteers have walked similar paths. This lived-experience leadership creates a peer-led support model that is relational, authentic, and sustainable. It is built on real life, rather than on.

Voices from the Community — Real Stories, Real Impact

“Before I came here, I felt like no one saw me. Now I cook, I volunteer, I’ve got my first job in years. This place helped me feel like a dad again.”
 — Community Kitchen participant and current volunteer

We believe that when people are supported emotionally, practically, and empowered, they begin to thrive. When one person thrives, the ripple effect can uplift families, schools, neighbourhoods, and entire communities.

“I came for food. I stayed because people believed in me. Now I support others, and I’m finally proud of who I am.”
— Former service user, now peer mentor

Through strong partnerships across Nottingham, we can reach more people and increase our collective impact. However, the warmth of shared meals, the dignity of real conversation, and the consistency of presence bring people back, week after week. That is where the real work and the real change begins.

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 What Your Support Will Achieve:

• Sustain and expand our Community Kitchen, meeting rising demand by increasing service days and exploring the delivery of weekend food hampers to families in hardship
• Deliver regular budgeting support, benefits advice, and financial wellbeing sessions to support long-term independence in partnership with Wonderful Way CIC
• Strengthen and scale our employment pathway programme by expanding partnerships with local employers such as INFRA-GEOPAV
• Provide accredited training and structured volunteering opportunities for at least 30 local individuals over the next 12 months
• Extend outreach efforts to men and families in hidden hardship who are often excluded from or unable to access traditional support services

Every donation received through this campaign will be matched by Aviva, doubling the impact of your support and enabling us to reach and uplift even more people in need.

This project is not just about providing meals. It is about rebuilding lives and community development. It is about creating a movement of lasting change that begins at the kitchen table and stretches across generations. We invite you to join us in making that change possible one person, one meal, and one new beginning at a time.