Bringing communities together through food

We run a variety of activities to bring the local community together through food. This includes a regular community lunch club in Ide Village Hall, an apple juicing project, and various other cookery and food activities, including cooking demos at St Thomas Community Garden.

This project will make a difference by reducing food waste; providing healthy food at affordable prices; increasing skills about how to cook with local, seasonal fruit and vegetables; and promoting the benefits of local, organic, vegan and ethical ingredients.

This is the second year we are running our apple juicing project and we want to make it even bigger and better than last year. We rescue apples which would otherwise go to waste, by picking unwanted apples from people's gardens, as well as apples in local farms and orchards that can't be sold. The apples are turned in delicious juice. We need start up funding to pay for the juicing, bottling and labelling of the juice, and in exchange you can get some of the juice. Some of the income from sales of the juice will go to Ide Community Orchard.

We also need funding to pay for more equipment to run our regular community lunch club and cookery classes, as well as a new website and publicity materials. Our lunch club helps reduce food waste, as we use surplus produce provided by Exeter Food Action and local farms, including Shillingford Organics. It is run on a pay as you feel basis, so that it's accessible to everyone. 

We also run free cookery classes for the local community, including demos at St Thomas Community Garden, which were very popular with local school children.

We want to continue and expand all these community food activities over the next year.