Information on Food for a Change and on exciting new project
Victoria Ashley
Hello everyone
I’m writing to let you know that Food for a Change is going on holiday/having an intermission for some time! The cuts to local services and the struggles of many charities and voluntary groups made it increasingly difficult to sustain, but along with that I also felt the need to ‘practice what I teach’ around balance and spend less time working (less than 24/7 anyway!) and more time doing other stuff. Fortunately for me a fantastic full-time job opportunity came up serendipitously at the time I had finally decided to move on. More on the new job in a mo.
Teaching and working with a huge range of people to help build confidence, skills and reduce isolation through the vehicles of cheap healthy cookery and eating together was what Food for a Change was about. But it quickly became much more than that - helping me to learn and develop massively along with the participants, providing lots of opportunities for volunteers, and working and developing 3 community gardens in Poole. So a massive thank you to all the volunteers who helped FfaC get of the ground, run successfully and grow: Natalie C, , Norm B, Jacqui BS, Theresa D, Viki W, Andrew B, John F, Steve M, Ann B…. You are all superstars, thank you thank you :). And of course thanks to all the orgs that helped me; the CVS, Tony Gibbons from the friendly Food Club for our jointly funded projects, Val Jeffries from Ignite, who bought me my first portable hobs, UnLtd, The Co-Op Bank, Clare D, Clare Sutton from PHP, and all the many organisations that hired me in.
I have 2 large trunk boxes + of cooking equipment – pans, silicon utensils, measuring equipment, a couple of portable hobs etc etc up for grabs for a small donation or free. Any charities or voluntary groups are welcome to ask, for example if you have clients who move on to live independently or from homeless to homed that could do with some cookery equipment. I also have piles of laminated recipes. Please contact me if you think some of my stuff could be useful.
The community gardens are going strong, although it’s now the quiet time, in Poole Town, Turlin Moor and Alderney West (but they’ll be having their Halloween parties soon ).
If you are looking for something similar for your clients in terms of cookery workshops, please contact Tony Gibbons of the Friendly Food Club on …..
So, my new job. This may well be of interest to you and the people you support. I’m working for Livability on the new BBO project, helping people who are not working to get into work, training or job searching. The great thing about this project is that we are not restricted to straight-up, ‘ hard’ employability skills but can address needs in a holistic and client-led way. Attendance is voluntary, not connected to benefits and is open to people who are not working and have the right to live and work in the UK. I am planning to email all of my contacts (ie you) from my work email address with a flyer – if you’d rather I don’t do that then please reply to this email. If I don’t hear back from you within the next couple of days requesting that I don’t email, then I will contact you from work. If, once you’ve received that email and more info about the project, you feel you don’t want me to keep your contact details for Livability, you can email then and I’ll take you out of my contacts. So basically, you can unsubscribe now, soon, later or never!! For many of you it could be really useful for your clients
Thanks so much for the opportunities so many of you have given me to run what was a very successful mini social enterprise. It wasn’t financially particularly successful, though I made a living, but in terms of feedback and results it was truly outstanding for and because of the service users. I have 6 years worth of feedback from approximately 1100 people – comments vary from “increasing confidence to cooking cheaply and healthily” to “life-changing”. 100% of the feedback questions on teaching, learning, confidence building and so on were rated good to excellent. Final reports are in (slow) progress. Thank you all so much for hiring Food for a Change for your clients’ benefit.
Apologies if you are in my contacts but we haven’t worked together – but the new project info may be useful to you.
So, goodbye for now from Food for a Change and hello from Livability UCan
Vicky
Vicky Ashley
07591 127999
Food for a Change
in...@chestnutnursery.org.uk
Angela Mansbridge
Project Manager
Chestnut Nursery
75 Kingland Road
Poole
BH15 1TN
Tel: 01202 685999
in...@chestnutnursery.org.uk
Chestnut Nursery is a project of SWOP (Sheltered Work Opportunities Project) which is a registered charity. The project provides meaningful work in a supportive and pressure-free environment, for adults with severe and enduring mental illness.
The Sheltered Work Opportunities Project is a registered charity (No 900325) and a company limited by guarantee (No 2449757).
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Julie Plumley
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