ROOTS4LIFE

Roots4Life run out of a purpose-built community centre, named 'The Baker Centre'. Based on a 8.6 acre site, we are home to a teaching kitchen, growing beds, a wildlife pond, orchard, wildflower meadow and field. Here, we focus on prevention and intervention activities that address obesity, malnutrition and loneliness across generations. 

We want everybody to have...

• Improved physical and mental well-being. 

• Better understanding, attitudes and behaviours around food, eating and exercise.

• Raised sense of community and more positive friendships.

To do this, we currently offer...

‘Holiday Food and Fun’ programme: A holiday camp aimed at children on Free School Meals. Each day we offer a variety of enriching activities including a cooking lesson, gardening and growing, mindfulness, multi-sports, dancing and drumming. On top of this they receive a hot meal and two snacks made by our in-house chef.

Green Mondays: tackling the Monday blues by getting outside and connecting with nature and other people. Ran by our horticultural therapist Cat, food growing, nature conservation, mindfulness, group discussions, cooking with produce fresh from our raised beds, sharing tea and stories.

Community Pantry: a ‘no questions asked’ food bank, using food surplus from our partners, topped up with vegetables from our allotment! Runs from 1.30-3.30 pm. 

Warm Hub Wednesdays: once a week we provide free homemade soup and bread, in a warm space where people can sit and talk to one another from 12.30-3.30 pm. 

Wild Wednesdays: a gardening volunteering session. We encourage the 'Warm Wednesday' users to get out into the garden and volunteer too!

Community Meal: a monthly hot meal shared with others in the local community and with food parcels to take away.

Pilates classes: these are paid for classes, but we would like to be able to offer places for free! 

We would like to offer (help us make our dreams come true!):

‘Holiday Food and Fun’ programme: during half term! The current government funding only allows for the key holidays, but not for half terms. Unfortunately hunger doesn’t skip half terms, and as the energy crisis hits we are even more concerned as people struggle to pay their bills and feed their families.

Cooking courses: We want to expand our offering of cooking courses to include the likes of 'Healthy eating on a budget', 'Waste not want not', 'Tin can cooking' and 'How to use your air fryer' - educational courses to help people learn how to get the most out of food, saving money, preventing waste, and helping to improve their health and the impact we have on the planet.

And this is just the beginning! We have huge dreams but our team is small. We are lucky to have an amazing space with huge potential, but we need support so that we can fulfill it! 

Where will your money go? It can help in many ways - to pay for the electricity for a cooking lesson, for new bulbs for the allotment, for the hourly rate of one of our team, every small donation will support our work.