The Real Junk Food Project Plymouth

Aim: To build a food store and kitchen enabling us to continue to intercept, cook and provide meals to all, using food destined for landfill.

Plymouth’s Real Junk Food Project has been working since April 2016 as part of a national network of Real Junk Food projects across the UK.

Our mission is simple - to feed bellies, not bins!! We do this by working with  local supermarkets, businesses, shops, food producers and farms - intercepting food that would otherwise be thrown away, reducing needless landfill and feeding hungry bellies with delicious food instead.

We need YOUR HELP to continue to grow what we do. Every pound you pledge to this campaign before 24th January 2017 will be match funded by Santander Bank. If you can’t support the campaign with a donation right now, please spread the word and share our campaign - your personal recommendation of our project can be worth as much as £20 a time.

What we’ll do with the money you contribute:

Our food brings people together. When people come together to eat, social isolation is reduced in our communities and friendships and support networks are built. The food we make is made from scratch and usually contains lots of fresh fruit and vegetables so is healthy and nutritious. Sometimes people pay for their meal with donations of money but sometimes they contribute their time or skills. We really value all types of payment and our helpers, volunteers  and customers make the project what it is.

Since launching the crowdfund we have found a great premises and a walk in freezer. This is fantastic as with these resources we can increase the food we intercept and the meals we provide to people. There is still lots to do though, The kitchen space needs work and the freezer needs to be built!

Here are some examples of what your pledges will help to fund

• £1 would help us to buy utensils foil and dish cloths
• £5 would help us to buy knives pans and dishes
• £10 would help us buy materials for repairs to the kitchen building we have lined up
• £25 would help us put lights and power into our freezer store room
• £50 would allow us to buy an induction hob for the kitchen
• £100 would allow us to pay for fuel for our transport between events, lunches and food collections.
• £250 would allow us to pay a years electricity bill for the kitchen
• £600 would allow us to purchase a fantastic walk in freezer room so we can store food.

Every penny raised from the campaign will go back into making Plymouth’s Real Junk Food Project more sustainable. During the eight months in which we have been up and running, our team of 25 volunteers have worked together to serve over 3000 meals to more than 2000 people and intercepted more than five tonnes of food. To continue this work, we urgently need to set up a new food storage facility and kitchen.

We have set an ambitious target of £10,000 but this isn’t all-or-nothing!! Every pound you pledge will go to the project, even if we don’t reach our grand total.

Here’s what we can achieve at each stage of our total

• If we reach £600, we’ll be able to buy our walk in freezer
• If we reach £1000, we’ll be able to build and install the freezer in a wooden building
• If we reach £2,500, we’ll be able to make repairs to a kitchen space, including mending a leaky roof
• If we reach £5,000, we’ll be able to fit the kitchen with storage, new flooring (at the moment the kitchen has an unfinished floor) and buy extra portable hobs soup urns and plates bowls and cutlery so we can pop up in more places in our communities
• If we reach £10,000, we’ll be able to do all of the above which will mean we have the capacity to intercept more food and feed more bellies. We will also be able to begin to develop our work with youth groups housing projects and shelters to provide cooking classes and healthy food and skills for more people.

How else can you help?

Every pledge and contribution is valuable to our project, but we know that people don’t always have money to spare. If this is the case, there are lots of other ways that you can help us to continue to do great things in the community.

• Your time - We work with 25 volunteers who keep the project going. For many of our volunteers their time with the project has been enriching, giving them opportunities to learn, to make friends and develop their skills. The Real Junk Food Project Plymouth has been able to engage with many different groups of people including the young long term unemployed, school and university students, families and youth clubs to inspire change and provide opportunities for work experience and cooking skills to be learnt. If you’d like to volunteer with us - please get in touch.

• Your donations - Donations of equipment and kitchen items would also be gratefully received. Perhaps you know of a commercial kitchen that is being updated and needs to rehome items? Please let us know, or recommend us to people who might be able to help out.

• Your expertise - As we expand as an organisation, we’d like to continue to improve how we do things, how we manage what we do and how we communicate what we’re up to. If you have skills in areas like social media, graphic design, communications, project management, fundraising etc, please let us know how you’d like to contribute to what we do.

• Your recommendation - If you like what we do, be sure to tell your friends, family and colleagues about our project. Visit us next time we run a pop-up cafe, book us to cater your next event or simply keep in touch and share our posts on social media. You can join our Facebook community here - https://www.facebook.com/TheRealJunkFoodProjectPlymouth/

Our plans for 2017 & beyond:

We started with one event a week in Plymouth throughout May, June and July and now we have grown to three events a week at venues in Liskeard and Plymouth. To date we have held regular weekly community lunches in a scout hut and childrens centre, worked with youth centres and community cafes and pubs, local charity groups supporting families and children, rural church groups, refugee action groups, food festivals and sustainability and education events.

In 2017, we’ll be hosting lots more of our pop-up cafes in Plymouth at the Bread & Roses community pub, in Liskeard at the Scout Hut, and popping-up lots of other venues and event - stay in touch & see dates via our Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/TheRealJunkFoodProjectPlymouth/

With your help, we are also hoping to grow in terms of our scope and provision. In particular, we want to create more opportunities for unemployed people to learn new skills with us. To do this we need the infrastructure in place. The size of that expansion will depend on the amount of money we can raise through campaigns like this one, and through donations of kitchen equipment. Thank you for your time and consideration of the project. Please help us to continue our work - reducing unnecessary waste, building community in deprived areas, and feeding hungry bellies not bins!!