Food Aid Providers Capacity Building Project

Islington’s Cost of Living Summit highlighted the need for a capacity building pilot project to join up and build the resilience of those providing crisis food aid and community food hubs so that they can better able support individuals in crisis by wrapping around them the support that they need.  In response, a partnership was formed between Help on Your Doorstep, Manor Gardens Welfare Trust, Octopus Community Network, and Voluntary Action Islington.

By bringing together the strengths of each partner organisation and those of the networks that they coordinate the capacity building programme aims to directly meet the immediate and underlying needs of those experiencing financial crisis whilst also building grassroots capacity.

Recognising that those visiting Foodbanks and Community Food Hubs are likely to be those most negatively affected by the cost-of-living crisis, a key pillar of the project is to join up a network of food aid providers, then through a programme of targeted capacity building, knit this essential help into the fabric of Islington’s rich and diverse welfare, employability and health and wellbeing support, so that people can get the right support at the right time, and move from crisis to wellbeing.

 

  • Integrating Advice into Food Provision

    Feedback from the project launch in June highlighted a need for more partnership working, and support for food providers to be able to provide information and advice to those using their services.

    Help on Your Doorstep have since engaged with six local Food Aid Providers, where they hold regular advice sessions so that residents can be seen and supported on site. Initial conversations on the day leads either to direct referrals, advice being provided on the day, or a follow up appointment made.

    Supported by Bilingual Navigators to ensure a more inclusive provision, over 200 residents have now been supported through this work.

  • Bilingual Navigators

    Manor Gardens Welfare Trust have recruited and trained 15 Bilingual Navigators as part of this project.

    Languages spoken include Bengali, Urdu, Greek, Polish, Albanian, Somali, Dari, Tigrinya, Amharic, Ukrainian and Arabic.

    The Navigators are providing support in a range of contexts, including supporting Help on Your Doorstep within food providers settings, and at Cost-of-Living Events. Over 350 residents with language barriers have been reached, with 190 households signposted to local support services. The Navigators are also supporting with one to one case work at Manor Gardens, with many issues highlighted in addition to the cost-of-living crisis, including health inequalities and citizenship. 37 residents have received intensive case work.

    Read a Navigator Case Study

  • Community of Practice

    Join the Food Aid Providers Community of Practice (CoP), an opportunity to come together to discuss your provision, where there are successes and challenges, and learn from each other while thinking collectively about what a Food&More model would look like in Islington.

    What is a CoP? In all CoPs all members are seen as learners and teachers. A CoP provides an ideal environment for adults keen to learn and develop both personally and professionally, from one-another. CoP’s provide one of the best learning environments for adults who want to bring their life experiences to learning, who want to make connections between what they already know and the new things they are learning, want control over their learning experience, and what to apply their learning to their personal lives and/or work environment. 

    Who is the CoP for? Anyone involved in managing, coordinating, running or volunteering in a facility offering emergency/crisis food aid. 

    Sign up here!

  • Community Organising Workshops

    What is Community Organising? Community Organising is a process of bringing communities together to create positive change, through listening, reaching out and taking action. Communities work together to recognise common goals, identify solutions, and build collective power.  

    These workshops provide the opportunity to explore and develop skills in listening, identifying power and taking action within food aid settings, encouraging participants to bring and share their experiences, and apply learning to their day to day work. 

    Together we developed ideas for new pilot projects, based on the listening and reaching out you do with your communities. With those participating accessing small pots of funding to run these pilot projects.

    Who are Community Organising workshops for? Anyone involved in managing, coordinating, running or volunteering in a facility offering emergency/crisis food aid.

  • Volunteer Support

    It was clear from the project launch event that Food Aid Providers needed a range of capacity building support relating to recruiting and managing volunteers including increasing the number of volunteers supporting within the Food Aid Hubs.   

    Through the Volunteer Centre, the “Food Hub Volunteer” role has been crafted and promoted, to increase capacity building to Food Aid providers and provide a much-needed response to the needs identified.  VAI has worked closely with HOYD and Food Providers to identify and put in place processes to raise awareness of volunteering opportunities that residents can access to build their confidence and skills and reduce social isolation.

    57 residents who use food aid have registered to volunteer, with 10 so far placed in food aid settings and community organisations.

  • Local Wellbeing Networks

    Going forward, we are working hard on reaching and working more closely with Food Aid Providers through the Local Wellbeing Networks.

    Organisations have told us they would like more access to training and workforce development, and we will include relevant updates across all LWN meetings over the next 12 months.

    Find out about upcoming meetings, and read previous minutes here:

    North Locality

    Central Locality

    South Locality

  • Training Opportunities

    A the launch event in June we explored together some of the challenges and barriers you face, and what you need going forward to help address some of these challenges.

    This included a need to access training opportunities, and for an easy place to view the training opportunities that are already on offer.

    If you scroll down below the 'Project Timeline' section of this page, you'll see a selection of resources, including links to upcoming training. These will be updated regularly with a number of upcoming opportunities.

    These opportunities will also be shared via our monthly newsletter. You can sign up to the mailing list here!

  • Programme Launch

    The Food Aid Providers Capacity Building programme got off to a flying start with a ‘Community Conversation’ event to explore the current context of being a crisis food aid provider in Islington, and to delve deeper into what individual and collective learning and development needs exist.

    Why are we focusing upon capacity building?

    We all agreed that Islington should be at the forefront of providing a highly-responsive, quality-driven response to food aid provision, especially as many people visiting these are at their most vulnerable. We also agreed that residents should be able to readily access the help that they need, when they need it. Therefore, those providing crisis food support should be able to provide access to the wrap-around support needed.

  • Baseline Survey

    Understanding your work and your capacity building needs

    As part of the launch of the Food Aid Providers Capacity Building programme we are inviting all Food Aid providers in Islington to complete and submit a Baseline Survey.

    You can complete the survey here.

    What will we use the information for?

    The Capacity Building programme must respond to your learning and development needs, so the findings from the baseline will help us refine what’s on offer, but also help us better understand what you would like to gain from the programme.

  • Knitting and connecting the food aid provision in Islington

    We all agree that things work better if we have built meaningful relationships with others, we can connect and work with other organisations and points of support, and join up our work. Therefore, we agreed to encourage all crisis food aid providers to join the Network Connections Map and update their profile regularly so that residents and signposters can connect into existing services and activities.

    You can view and join the map here.

  • Stay up to date

    Throughout this project, we'll be sending a monthly newsletter with news, updates, upcoming opportunities and resources.

    You can sign up to join the mailing list here, and read previous issues below.

    News update 1 - July

    News update 2 - August

    News update 3 - September

    News update 4 - October

    News update 5 - November

    News update 6 - December

    News update 7 - January

    News update 8 - February

    News update 9 - March

    News update 10 - April

Project Timeline

Resources