Community Payback Pathways to Healthy Eating and Food Security

When we started out on this project, we had the relatively modest ambition of enlisting people on probation subject to an Unpaid Work Requirement of a Community Order (Community Payback) to produce healthy ready meals for community-run pantries as a way of paying back to the local communities against whom they had offended

What we didn’t realise at the time,  was the significance of working with Community Payback to do this and its  implications for strengthening community power in the foundational economy, not only of food, but also in the wider foundational economy of health, social care and community safety.

Community Payback strengthening the foundational economy

The foundational economy is that sector of the economy which supplies the everyday but essential goods and services that make life worth living in local communities and ensure their effective functioning. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Foundational Economy Innovation Fund pointed out to us that what we were doing was not only producing healthy ready meals for donation to  community-run pantries, but it was also strengthening  the foundational economy in food by opening up access to affordable healthy food for everyone irrespective of their income level.

What’s more, GMCA  pointed out that this also has a knock-on effect  on strengthening other sectors of the foundational economy - using the supply of food  to improve people’s health through an improved diet and to improve social care through community pantry-run meals on wheels services for example.

At the same time  working with Community Payback to do this also strengthens the Community Safety  sector of the foundational economy, using  food supplied by people on Community Payback to help reduce their reoffending and pay back for previous offending, making life worth living in those communities against whom they have offended and ensuring they function more effectively.

Community Payback catalysing  community power in the foundational economy

As a result of these unforeseen implications of our project GMCA invited us to apply for funding to further develop and build on this model of Community Payback strengthening the wider foundational economy by supplying healthy affordable food to community-run  pantries.

But this was not the only unforeseen implication of our project. The National Lottery who fund it, have recently committed to putting community power at the heart of their funding in England from 2026. By community power they mean local communities being able to increase their agency, power and control over the foundational economy in the places they live – power and control over the  essential goods and services they use and the decisions that affect their lives.

Our project does just that. It uses Community Payback to enable community-run pantries to increase their power and control, not only over their food supply, but also over their health, social care and community safety. Our project doesn’t just use Community Payback to supply  healthy meals to community-run pantries. It  makes community power a reality in those pantries. It catalyses community power in the foundational economy and so has significant long term implications for putting community power at the heart of Lottery funding in England from 2026.

Locally sourced pumpkins

Cooking ready meals has continued throughout the summer and autumn, thanks to the support of our community volunteers enlisting people on probation as Kitchen Assistants to help prepare the vegetables and pack the meals.

The pumpkins in the photo were turned into a wonderful Burmise Pumpkin Curry and we donated them to help feed the homeless in Manchester and Salford though the charity Two Brews: https://twobrews.org/

While the cooking is an important ingredient of the work we do, it’s only a part of what we are trying to achieve. What we’re all about is enlisting people on probation to provide affordable and nutritious food that enables people in food poverty to eat well and to eat well sustainably.

Our meals are all about providing an affordable alternative to the cheap low protein and highly processed foods which are often all that’s available to people in food poverty and which contribute to many people having poorer diets and corresponding long term health problems.

What’s more, much  of this unhealthy food has travelled for miles to reach the shops, thus contributing to carbon emissions which damage the health of the planet as well as its people.

That’s why our focus is on growing and cooking healthy food locally and delivering it to people in the most environmentally friendly way possible. So we’re not just about enlisting people on probation to help feed the poor and hungry, we’re much more about working with them to build a more sustainable local food system for everyone’s benefit This is what we mean by supporting the foundational economy – making sure everyone  gets the  everyday universal basics like food that make life worth living for everyone. 

One of our key aims is to introduce the principles of the circular economy to the production and distribution of good quality nutritious food for the Austerity Food Retail (AFR) sector. AFR addresses people most affected by austerity and the cost of living crisis. It includes social supermarkets, pantries and other forms of community shop offering highly discounted products, and often making use of surplus, waste or rejected foods which would otherwise be thrown away. 

The circular economy is a system where food and other materials never become waste and nature is regenerated. In a circular economy, products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting.

Our original plan was to introduce vermiculture – worm farms -  into the composting of food and other organic waste at our growing sites in the Spring of  2025. The aim was to use the organic fertiliser that the worms produce to improve the quantity and quality of the food we produce for AFR  during the summer months.

But one of our partner organisations, Egino Emerging  https://www.eginoemerging.org/

had the capacity to help out now and so we have taken on our first worm farm to introduce the principles of the circular economy to the production and distribution of good quality nutritious food for the AFR sector.

The bins are continuous flow wormeries. We enlist the people on probation working at our growing sites to top them up with old waste from the gardens  together with shredded cardboard (worms love the cardboard) and keep it well watered. The pipes at the front create a ledge and the worms live on top of this, in all the organic matter. They eat the organic matter and the result is a continuous flow of organic fertiliser that falls below the ledge and can be collected through the holes at the bottom for use on the growing sites to improve the quality and quantity of the yield and so turn food and other organic waste into good quality, highly nutritious food for AFR.

What’s more, by supplying us with these worm farms Egino also help us fulfil two further aims. By opening up the possibility of scaling  up for commercial production of organic fertiliser we can potentially create new income streams for AFR to bulk buy non surplus food supplies to supplement the dwindling supplies of surplus and donated food currently available to them. Many prison and community payback facilities in the United States do exactly that, so why can’t we do the same here to help the commercial sustainability of AFR?

https://eu.thegleaner.com/story/news/2019/03/25/worm-farming-saves-henderson-county-jail-thousands/3221605002/

But secondly, not only does this open up commercial possibilities to support AFR, it also helps fulfil our aim of opening up employment and self employment opportunities for the people on probation working on our project when they have successfully completed their unpaid work requirements with us.

So in the new year we will be introducing  Egino’s  Worm Farm Business Training and Support Course as an option for people on probation placed with us https://www.eginoemerging.org/free-worm-farming-course  - not only using worms to turn the circular economy, but also to turn the lives of people on probation round.

Sherlockai

Nornir has been working with volunteers to try and harness the power and the surge in interest around AI.  The plan is not to try and just maximise profit by using AI, but to use the technology for social purposes.

We have therefore developed a new Chatbot style system that is aimed to help ex offenders to adapt to life on release from prison. The release from prison can be a very challenging time for people, especially if the person has spent a long time in jail. Often these problems are simple to overcome but not if you are already traumatised by your life situation. The chatbot can help to provide this support by being available 24/7 ready to answer questions and support people who are most vulnerable.

An important point to note is that the chatbot hasn’t been designed by some teckies working in isolation. Its been co-developed by people with lived in experience of the criminal justice system making it relevant to their needs.

There has been a lot of interest from organisations who support ex offenders and we now have 2 live systems up and running.

For more information visit the web site at: https://www.sherlockai.org/

Peas growing in a raised bed

In the first 3 months we have been busy building the necessary partnerships required to make the work sustainable. This has included the following:

We have established a partnership with the Manchester Urban Diggers who are based at Platt Fields in Manchester. MUD already have a working kitchen and are excited about starting to also use it to create ready meals using their home-grown food surpluses. They are planning to run one cooking session in July as a test run. But due to the fact that its early in the season we must source surplus foods from other providers because the crops in the ground are not ready until Autumn.

We are looking to get Community Payback individual placements to help staff up the cooking process and are in negotiations with GM Probation about making this happen. Also how to get a CP team to work in the gardens growing food for the kitchens.

We have made links to a range of other interested organisations including Eat Well Manchester, Open Kitchen, Bread and Butter and also exploring the option of using a commercial kitchen at Yane Restaurant in Chorlton.

MUD is planning a Gleaning activity in the Autumn and we are making preparations for the CP teams to be part of the process and for the food gleaned, to be used in the production of ready meals.

Nornir has created a strategic partnership with GM Probation exploring how we can further develop the use of CP teams and individual placements to help support the Foundational Economy.

Staff at Nornir are seeking to build a large scale vermiculture programme in North Wales. The aim is to process 1000 tons (a year) of cow manure into organic fertiliser and once the work process is established, we will be looking to try and import the model into Greater Manchester.