Mapping Household Food Insecurity in Herefordshire
This week HGN welcomed three inspiring speakers to share information about the important work they are doing in Herefordshire to address issues of food insecurity and poverty.
Mary Burton from Brightspace Foundation, Harry King from the Wellbeing Cafe and Kristan Pritchard from Herefordshire Council’s Public Health team discussed their three different and complementary approaches to tackling the complex and interrelated issues of food waste, food insecurity, child poverty, and obesity in Herefordshire.
With some shocking statistics about the levels of food waste – and heart-breaking insights into poverty, and child hunger – the workshop looked particularly at what is already happening in Herefordshire to address these issues, and what more the HGN audience of around 30 people felt should or could be happening.
‘Good Food for All’ – an alliance of local organisations led by the Brightspace Foundation – aims to ascertain the scale of food poverty and insecurity in Herefordshire, and develop shared strategies to address the problem. For anyone who would like to know more please look at Brightspace Foundation’s website: https://www.brightspacefoundation.org.uk/our-projects/social-cultural/good-food-all
Kristan Pritchard from Herefordshire Council introduced the audience to the Sustainable Food Cities model they are hoping to introduce in Hereford. The award will mean:
- Promoting healthy and sustainable food
- Tackling food poverty, diet related ill health, and access to affordable healthy food
- Building community food knowledge, skills, resources and projects
- Promoting a vibrant and diverse sustainable food economy
- Transforming catering and food procurement
- Reducing waste and the ecological footprint of the food system
Kristan and her colleagues are working closely with Brightspace Foundation and other agencies locally, and this very positive step from Herefordshire’s Public Health team combines sustainability approaches with strategies to meet local public health needs. For more information see: http://sustainablefoodcities.org/about
And .. after a chance conversation in February of this year, Harry King and Yasmin Price were inspired into action to tackle food poverty and food waste locally, and have developed ‘The Wellbeing Cafe’ – an exciting and dynamic new project that will be making use of food waste in Hereford city to feed school age children during the ‘Hungry Holiday” gap this August.
The Wellbeing Cafe’s goal is to combat household food insecurity and its subsequent health inequalities through the provision of healthy, affordable food that everyone can access. The project is looking for supporters, volunteers and users – and will be making free meals available to all under 17 year olds from Wednesday – Saturday each week during August, alongside a programme of free holiday club workshops (such as cooking, arts, and crafts). The Cafe will be at Castle Green Pavillion, and for more information see: https://www.facebook.com/TheWellbeingCafeHereford/
… Some inspirational stories and projects that aim to tackle the injustice of this ever growing issue in food-producing Herefordshire. Our audience went away keen to support the work of those who are involved.
Our speakers (left to right) Mary Burton, Kristan Prichard and Harry King.
Thanks as always to Natalia and Left Bank Village for supporting this event.
