Growing area created with help from Community Payback Team

Nornir’s pioneering pathways to employment and food security project is empowering people on probation to become essential workers in Greater Manchester’s food economy. Through community growing spaces and partnerships with affordable food retailers, Nornir is creating sustainable solutions to food poverty while opening up routes back into work for ex-offenders.

See the link below for more details: 

https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/what-we-do/economy/foundational-economy-innovation-fund/how-nornir-is-reshaping-food-support-and-rehabilitation-in-greater-manchester/

Oyster mushrooms growing

In partnership with Fungall CIC we have been pushing ahead with the growing of mushrooms and then using them in cooking as a substitute for cheap imported and unhealthy meat.

This has been helped by the Community Payback teams helping to construct the growing containers and kitting out the insides. The first harvests of mushrooms have been made and some of this has been used in community cooking. But, similar to the food grown in the community garden. There has been a big demand for the mushrooms from the guys working on the Community Payback Scheme - many of whom are in food poverty themselves and so beneficiaries of the project.

Donating the produce to the guys who are actually growing it seems like such a powerful and inclusive step forward.

We have been looking into trying to make the process more formal, for example certification for growing mushrooms. At the moment we suspect the informal approach the supervisors have adopted will be just as effective, if not more so.

What was also impressive is that the guys were knocked out about how they could do it themselves 'better and cheaper than KFC' one of them suggested.  We feel that this is “empowerment in action” and although unexpected needs to be emphasised as a really positive outcome. It’s something we will certainly want to develop more in the future.

Locally grown food

We have continued to develop and support the growing of food by local organisations. The growing at Marple supported by the Community Payback team is now fully sustainable and producing ready meals on a small scale for food poverty projects. Therefore, we have moved on to develop the work further at Forever Fields.  However, the plan to grow local food and use it to cook ready meals for food poverty projects has been modified because of an unexpected demand for the produce from an unexpected source.

As the food has grown throughout the summer we have been working more with the guys working on the gardens from the Community Payback schemes, many of whom are in food poverty themselves. We have encouraged them to take produce home at the end of the day’s activity and to prepare their own nutritious ready meals for themselves at home. We have regular queues outside the poly tunnel and container for free tomatoes and mushrooms.

This has also been enhanced by showing the guys how to prepare and cook the food at their own homes. We have even had one of the CP placements boasting about making a “new”recipe he invented at home using the garden produce.  

We have been really pleased that the Placements clearly understood and learned about good food during their time on cp with us and how they can make their own much better (and cheaper) food than the “shit” they normally eat.

So we now have a new plan in place and that is to use good local grown food to create a menu that will appeal to lots of people. Vegan Fried Chicken and Chips, Vegan Jerk Fried Chicken etc. This will be seasoned and battered strips of oyster mushroom fried in an air fryer - 'strips, chips and peas' as one of the group called it.

Watch this space!

Photo of the tables ready for the warm hub afternoon

We have continued to develop the work we started with ready meals production being cooked by volunteers (including asylum seekers) and CP placements.

We realised that there was an existing warm hub at Chorlton Central Church. The Warm Hub cooked meals for people in food poverty on a Thursday afternoon. In order to maintain this valuable activity we have:

a)      Added our cooking sessions to the provision so that it can become more sustainable. Our chef is cooking up to 40 for ready meals that have been donated to the homeless.

b)      Food is then prepared for the warm hub which attracts up to 40 adults. This has been so successful that the adults have started to bring their children and we can have up to 20 children at each session.

c)      In order to make the sessions more sustainable we have also set in place food collections from Fairshare Manchester. The food is collected each week for a mall fee and this has massively reduced the costs of running the warm hub and ready meals.

d)      There is a break over the summer but when cooking starts again in September we are planning a separate activity for the children as a craft club with food on a Thursday. Also moving the adults warm hub and ready meal production to Wednesday.

Because there will be no children at the Wednesday warm hub we can once again start to use CP placements in the kitchen