In the last of our special Food Waste Action Week podcast episodes, we’re taking you to meet another one of our community food members.
Trafford Veterans has been working with FareShare Greater Manchester since the Covid pandemic. The group, which supports armed forces & emergency services veterans living in Trafford, has been running for a decade. When the pandemic hit, it extended the services it offers to include food too.
In 2015, the group was formed after its two founding members, Royal Navy Veteran, Claire Wright & British Army Veteran Chris Squires (pictured below), left the armed forces and faced a struggle with physical and mental injuries. This affected their transition from the military back into their respective communities.
Chris and Claire’s experiences prompted them to provide peer support to other veterans and members of the community, so people would not feel alone.
Each week, with the help of local volunteers, they run a Friday Hub where people can come to access help and support as well as enjoy a light lunch. Their monthly Breakfast Club offers a social space for people to meet and chat over a cooked breakfast. Both of these events are supported by food they receive from FareShare Greater Manchester.
We went along to one of their monthly Breakfast Clubs to find out more about what they do and see where some of the good-to-eat surplus food we provide them with goes. You can see some photos below of the Breakfast Club and the North West Corps of Drums which includes Claire and her fellow veterans and performed for the members during our visit.
You can find out more about Trafford Veterans on their website.
If you enjoy listening to this podcast episode, please share it with anyone who you think would benefit from hearing it too. To find out when our next episode is out, please subscribe to Food Stories Podcast on your podcast app, and follow us on social media.
Catering groups make up a small but hugely important part of our Community Food Membership. Increasingly, we receive larger amounts of catering sized packs of food, so we are looking to sign up more catering groups to our books.
If you’re cooking for your local community and think we can help you with food, please get in touch with us. Contact our Membership & Information Coordinator Karina on membership@emergemanchester.co.uk or give us a call on 0161 223 8200 (Option 4).
It’s National Food Waste Action Week so we’re sharing some special episodes looking at where our food goes and in this case, where it comes from.
Last year, FareShare Greater Manchester redistributed almost 2,000 tonnes of surplus food which would have gone to waste. In real terms, that’s equivalent to 4.6 million meals which went to support 306 charities and community groups across our city and beyond.
This time we’re speaking to three of our super suppliers. They are local food suppliers – Hartshead Meats in Tameside, Holland’s Pies in Lancashire & Soreen in Trafford Park. Both Holland’s Pies and Soreen donate surplus food which cannot be sold conventionally. This may be due to short dated products or issues like damaged outer packaging. By giving us that food, which would otherwise go to landfill, we can get it out quickly to community groups and charities who can put it good use immediately. Among the many benefits of doing this, are saving on the cost of disposing of surplus food and achieving ESG targets by saving valuable resources.
After hearing about Marcus Rashford’s work with FareShare Greater Manchester during the pandemic, Hartshead Meats decided to support us with food donations. Unlike some other of our super suppliers, it’s purely a donation not a way of solving a waste issue. They say they simply want to make a difference in their local community and donate valuable protein to our operation.
If you are a food producer and you’re interested in donating food to support what we do, please get in touch with us. You can either call us on 0161 223 8200 (Option 4), send us an email to: info@fareshare.org.uk or visit our get in touch page using the button below.
Food Stories Podcast is back for a special mini-series for Food Waste Action Week. In this cookery club podcast episode, we’re taking you to visit one of our Community Food Members, St Paul’s Cookery Club in Wythenshawe. The after-school club offers studcookery club podcastents the chance to learn the important life skill of cookery in a fun environment. At the end of each session, each child gets enough food to take home and feed their whole household.
Set up by two members of the non-teaching staff at the school, Angie Ridgeway (PA to the Headteacher) and Jackie Sumner (School Caretaker) as a way of engaging pupils after school, the club sources good-to-eat surplus food from FareShare Greater Manchester to use each week. The students involved not only learn new skills but they know they are helping the environment by preventing the food from going to waste. This cookery club podcast highlights the real-world impact of community food initiatives like these.
Catering groups make up a small but hugely important part of our Community Food Membership. Increasingly, we receive larger amounts of catering sized packs of food, so we are looking to sign up more catering groups to our books. If you are cooking for your local community and think we can help you with food, please get in touch with us. Contact our Membership & Information Coordinator Karina on membership@emergemanchester.co.uk or give us a call on 0161 223 8200 (Option 4).
In this episode of the Food Stories Podcast, corporate partnerships are our focus. Partnerships with businesses across Greater Manchester are vital to our work. Without their financial support, professional help and volunteering provided by our corporate partners, we would not be able to achieve as much as we do at FareShare Greater Manchester.
Assistance from our corporate partners can range from sponsoring a delivery vehicle to engaging staff in team-building volunteering days as well as offering professional support in the form of resources or advice. In this episode, we explore the different levels of corporate partnership we offer at FareShare Greater Manchester as well as hearing from one of our long-standing partners, N Brown.
If you are interested in exploring Corporate Partnerships with FareShare Greater Manchester, please get in touch.
Email: corporatesupport@emergemanchester.co.uk or find out more here about becoming a corporate partner.
This time on food stories podcast episode 5, we are sharing the story of one of our community food members, Emmie’s Kitchen. The charity was set up to support parents staying at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital while their children are being cared for there.
The charity was started by the family of Emmie, a young girl who, when she was being treated for leukaemia, identified a need to support the families of other sick children. What started as an operation to cook meals for those parents, has developed into a weekly takeaway delivery (on a Friday night) as well as wellbeing events for families and special Christmas goody bags too.
Emmie finished her treatment in 2019, but the family are committed to keeping Emmie’s Kitchen going. As part of their Friday night offering, they give parents snack bags to support them over the weekend – much of the food in those bags comes from FareShare Greater Manchester.
In this food stories podcast episode 5, we visit the Emmie’s Kitchen team on one of their Friday night takeaway evenings and sit down for a chat with Eve and Jacqueline Naraynsingh, Emmie’s Mum and Gran.
You can follow Emmie’s Kitchen on social media:
FareShare Plus is a community cash and carry which operates alongside our main warehouse at FareShare Greater Manchester. It gives our Community Food Members an alternative way to access the surplus good-to-eat food we have in stock by letting organisations come to browse the food on offer and take away what they need.
Each week 80 charities and community groups visit FareShare Plus to buy the food they use to serve their local communities. For many groups, food is a way of opening conversations to help those they support access other services. If you’re interested in joining FareShare as a Community Food Member, find out how to join FareShare.
In this food stories podcast episode 4, we take you on a tour of our FareShare Plus operation and introduce you to a couple of our Community Food Members who visit on a weekly basis; St George’s Day Centre in Bolton and Fresh which supports schools in Stockport which are are helping families in their community with food and tackle food insecurity. The community cash and carry model allows these organisations to access affordable food, making a significant difference to families in need. If you’re inspired to help, consider supporting our work as a volunteer or fundraise for charity.
Listen to this food stories podcast episode 4 on your favourite podcast app or via the player below. If you enjoy listening to this episode, please share it with anyone who you think would benefit from listening too!
This time, in our food stories podcast episode 3 we’re taking you out to meet one of our community food members, the Tameside Meals Project. The catering group was formed during Covid by Kala Mandviwala thanks to a local authority grant. It aims to feed the most vulnerable in the local community via community organisations and social workers.
Thanks to the relationship Kala built with FareShare Greater Manchester, and the access that gave her to our heavily discounted surplus food, she was able to make that initial grant funding stretch well beyond the Covid lockdowns. Since that money ran out, Kala’s been fundraising to keep the organisation running. Each week, Kala and her team of volunteers use a kitchen in Hyde Town Hall to cook 150 to 250 nutritious meals for those in need.
In this food stories podcast episode 3, you will meet Kala as she visits FareShare Greater Manchester. We then go to Hyde Town Hall to see the Tameside Meals Project team in action.
If you enjoy listening to this episode, please share it with anyone who you think would benefit from listening too!
Welcome to the Food Stories podcast episode 2, a podcast series from FareShare Greater Manchester. This time we are sharing a few stories from our valuable volunteers.
Last year, FareShare Greater Manchester rescued almost 2,000 tonnes of good-to-eat surplus food from going to waste. That food was redistributed to more than 300 charities and community groups across Greater Manchester and in real terms equated to 4.6 million meals. We would not be able to do the work we do without our fantastic volunteers who last year donated over 21,000 hours of their time to our operation.
Meet Liz Lauder, our Head of Volunteering & Employability Programmes. In this episode, you’ll also hear from some of our valuable volunteers. They share why they choose to give their time and what they gain from helping us. Additionally, we’ll take you out on the road with us during one of our delivery rounds.
If you enjoy listening to this food stories podcast episode 2, please share it with anyone who you think would benefit from listening too! And if you’ve been inspired by what you’ve heard and you’d like to give volunteering at FareShare Greater Manchester a go, please get in touch with us :
Email us: volunteering@faresharegm.org.uk
Call us: 0161 223 8200.
Welcome to the first episode of Food Stories, a podcast from FareShare Greater Manchester. In this episode we want to share our food story. Learn more about who we are and what we do.
Last year, FareShare Greater Manchester rescued almost 2,000 tonnes of good-to-eat surplus food from going to waste. That food was redistributed to more than 300 charities and community groups across Greater Manchester. In real terms, this equated to 4.6 million meals. We would not be able to do the work we do without our fantastic volunteers. Last year, they donated over 21,000 hours of their time to our operation.
In this food stories podcast episode 1 we share a bit about what we do at our warehouse on New Smithfield Market. We also give some insight into how we get that much needed food out into the community.
You can listen to our food stories podcast episode 1 here on our website as well as on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other podcast platforms too.