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During the Coronavirus pandemic, a new coalition has been established to support community organisations serving food-insecure households. Food For Good Glasgow is a coalition of Glasgow Community Food Network, Glasgow Food Policy Partnership, Strath University Food Sharing, Slow Food Glasgow and civil society volunteers. For more information about what Food For Good are doing read below on this page otherwise you can skip to specific information for the following by clicking these buttons:
What are Food For Good Glasgow doing?
We are supporting community organisations by:
- Contacting groups across the city to map their current and changing needs
- Sourcing and trialling the safe distribution of a small range of dried goods and vegetables to community organisations that are offering a food service with little or no funding for food and/or struggling to access food
- Getting feedback from groups about the systems and deliveries to improve service
- Trialling collecting and delivering Fare Share food to groups
- Trialling distribution of hand sanitiser produced by Glasgow Distillery
- Looking to soon scale up
- Working with 3rd sector partners, Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector, Voluntary Glasgow, private sector and Glasgow City Council to map resources and needs and to look at ways we can collaborate and reduce duplication of services
- Sharing information and updates via this website and Food For Good FB page (works in progress)
- Setting up organisational systems to enable us to maintain our offer to group over the next 3 months (at least)
Why are we doing this?
The need for food has taken a sharp increase throughout the Covid19 Pandemic. According to a report by The Food Foundation, an estimated 3 million people were going hungry just three weeks into lockdown. This is due to many factors; food banks and community organisations were at risk of closure due to health and safety concerns and lack of food donations, community meals have been suspended due to the need for social distancing and community organisations who normally organise parcels or meals to food insecure people are having food supply issues. These supply issues range from the supermarkets' 'just in time' supply chains meaning they didn't at first have enough food to cope with the increased amount people were needing to buy (due to eating more meals at home), their long supply chains being affected by multiple factors slowing them down, restrictions on what can be purchased per person (groups have had challenges buying in bulk for their service users) and customers not donating to food banks at this pressured time (concerns over personal financial or food insecurity).
The closure of schools has meant there is no longer free school meal support provided to low income families meaning they are having to pay for these meals themselves. Support is now being offered to these families via a voucher card scheme loaded with £20/pupil per fortnight by Glasgow City Council, however this is currently only redeemable in Farmfoods.
Those that have recently become income insecure may have to wait before receiving universal credit and may need to access emergency food in this period increasing the demand for the services of community organisations.
We have concerns that there will be people not on any council lists that may be falling through the cracks. This is why the on-the-ground work that's being done by community organisations who have contact with some of these folk is even more valuable at this time than usual.
How we are funded
We have been successful in our application to the Scottish Government’s COVID-19 Supporting Communities Fund. This will fund a 3 month project to distribute emergency food, protective equipment and cleaning materials to community organisations that have little to no funding and/or are struggling to access food. This will fund sesional staff to coordinate and distribute £33,000 worth of food. We hope that we will get additional funding for food and equipment after this has been used.
Before we were awarded this money we:
- Have been supported by volunteers and staff from partner organisations
- Were kindly donated use of The Space in the East End to distribute food from
- Were kindly donated a combination of money, food and cleaning and distribution supplies by Locavore
- Ran a crowdfunder campaign in which we raised over £2900
- Used some GCFN core funds usually for our day-to day work (which comes from the Scottish Government) to pay coordinating staff
We are now using Glasgow University as a base for distribution. The university have offered us space to distribute from, refrigeration space, drivers, vans, access to their ordering systems, staff and even food from the vending machines! We are incredibly grateful to Glasgow University for their generous donations and contribution towards Food For Good.
How can you help?
Click here to find out how you can support Food For Good Glasgow.
Work With Us - Current Vacancies
We have a number of job roles connecting to the Covid Response Project that we need to fill immediately. Click here for more information.