Family Action's FOOD Club, in partnership with Greenwood Academy Trust and FareShare Midlands, provides 25,600 meals for families facing food insecurity in Peterborough.

The Greenwood Academies Trust (GAT) has 38 academies educating approximately 20,000 pupils, across Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Peterborough and Lincolnshire. For over 150 years, Family Action has been building stronger families, by providing practical, emotional and financial support for those who are experiencing poverty, disadvantage and social isolation. In an innovative partnership, together the GAT fund Family Action Peterborough to have an extra order of surplus supplies from FareShare Midlands every week. 

Peterborough is ranked one of the most deprived areas within Cambridgeshire. There is high unemployment, pockets of deprivation and identified food poverty across the city. Family Action's FOOD Club tackles this through a membership scheme set up to provide families with good quality food at a low cost. As well as varied and nutritious food supplies, the club also provides additional support services, including:

• Housing support advice
• Credit to support parents managing household budgets depleted by the cost of living crisis
• Means tested benefit to apply for the Family Action Fund, which provides individuals and families with a £200 supermarket voucher.
• Holiday Activities and Food programmes over the school holidays, providing year-round support to families in the area.

Family Action supports over 60,000 families each year through over 165 local services across England and the Isle of Man. In Peterborough, there are 56 families registered as members for the Tuesday FOOD Club and since the project began it has saved 11 tonnes of surplus food from landfill, which is equivalent to approx 25,600 meals. This has prevented the waste of 17.8 tonnes of embedded CO2e emissions and saved 16.7 million litres of embedded water from being wasted. 

“The Tuesday Food Club with GAT has really grown and we enjoy a great range of delivery items from FareShare. Members are saving money, so they can use the money they’d normally spend on food on other things like heating. There are social benefits – it’s reducing isolation, as people are meeting and friendships are starting to grow. Jo from Welland has been very active in promoting the Club and the majority of the parents that have joined are from that school. Without all the parties involved, the Club wouldn’t have been as successful as it is”.

Graham Feek, Deputy Chief Executive of Greenwood Academies Trust said:

“I have seen at first hand the impact that the work of Family Action and FareShare has had in helping address food insecurity in our communities. We wanted more of our families, who are especially feeling the impact of cost-of-living cost crisis at this time, to be able to benefit from these programmes. Therefore, we were very pleased to work with our partners to enable more of our families in Peterborough to access this provision. We very much hope that in time this becomes a model where we can help many more families across our communities access high quality, nutritious food, whilst also reducing food waste.” 

“The cost of living crisis has had a huge impact on everybody, whether unemployed or employed. The majority of the parents who come on a Tuesday aren’t in paid employment, the ones that are, work part-time or on a zero contract, all at minimum wage. It’s just impacted hugely, in every way, on everyone”.