Secret Soup Society: fighting food waste and feeding families

Secret Soup Society fights food waste and feeds families. They make soup using food destined for landfill and redistribute surplus food and goods to organisations fighting food inequality. They’ve served over 2000 portions of soup, saved about three tons of food from landfill and have a team of 10 volunteers who regularly come and cook, or rescue, food.

Founder Siân Kidd spent 16 months working for The Vench, a community centre and adventure playground in Lockleaze, who provide free meals to local children and families at holiday lunch clubs and weekly play sessions.

The Vench also run a weekly ‘Food Club’ in partnership with Family Action and Fareshare South West, providing local people ‘good-quality food at a low cost’ by redistributing food that would have been sent to landfill, some of which was the food I was collecting.

Lockleaze ward is amongst the 10% of most deprived neighbourhoods in the UK, it is also considered to be a ‘food desert’, meaning it is a difficult area to access affordable, quality food, so these services are essential and became lifelines for many when the pandemic hit.

Now, volunteers meet once a week to cook soup from the surplus food collected and donated from local supermarkets and brilliant organisations like the Avon Gleaning Network (previously Bristol Gleaning Network).

Secret Soup Society are also developing school workshops after a successful trial last summer and in March will be doing the first of four Community Feast events for Lockleaze residents at The Vench.

Our aim is to set up as a Community Interest Company, and Siân is currently receiving support to do that through the School of Social Entrepreneurs’ ‘Lloyds Start Up Programme’.

'Food doesn’t just nourish us, it brings us together and when we work together, we can make real, lasting difference to communities.'

'Our vision is a sustainable food system where everyone has equal access to the food that we all deserve and we’re hoping to get there, one bowl at a time.'

Find out more and join in at the Secret Soup Society.

Source: https://www.goingforgoldbristol.co.uk/secret-soup-society-fighting-food-waste-and-feeding-families/

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