Funded by the National Lottery

Payback Pathways to Post-Covid Food Security – project summary.

What would you like to do?

Community Payback (CP) is a court sentence requiring offenders to undertake up to 300 hours unpaid community work. During lockdown CP workers in Stockport worked in surplus food centres (https://fareshare.org.uk) and pantries (https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk) packing and delivering food parcels for families in food poverty. Many in food poverty themselves continue to 'do their hours' at Fareshare and pantries. But increasing demand for surplus food, together with supermarket efficiencies and labour shortages is reducing surplus food available and many pantries are seeking new sources of income to bulk-buy non-surplus food to supplement what surplus food is available, without having to put up pantry membership fees, which would debilitate their mission to help families out of food poverty. Our project will use CP workers to raise funds for pantries while providing a pathway into paid employment for themselves, lifting them and pantry members out of food poverty. They'll start their CP work as pantry volunteers and complete it as work trials with supermarkets who'll guarantee at least an interview for paid employment on successful completion of their CP work at the supermarket. The supermarket will make a charitable donation to the pantry equivalent to the monetary value of the CP worker's unpaid work trial as fulfilment of the CP community benefit requirement and their own Corporate Social Responsibility commitments. This will enable the pantry to bulk-buy food to supplement dwindling surplus food supplies without increasing membership fees. Piloting over 12 months in Stockport, people will learn about the project through pantry members. It'll provide a sustainable way out of food poverty for CP workers and pantry members and a new source of pantry income while easing labour shortages at supermarkets. We will base a national roll-out on learning from the project and produce a template for CP with other charities and employers nationwide.

 How does your project meet at least one of our funding priorities?

The project changes and adapts the role of CP workers supporting pantries, enabling them to become more resilient and respond to the new and future challenges of post covid dwindling surplus food supplies. It builds strong relationships within and across communities by strengthening pantry membership and the pantries' offer to their local communities. It rebuilds a pro-social relationship between offenders and the communities against whom they have offended and strengthens the relationship between supermarkets and the communities they serve. It helps more people to reach their potential through pantry membership by supporting them at the earliest stage to get out of food poverty. It helps offenders to reach their full potential of crime-free lives by providing an opportunity for them to pay back to the communities against whom they have offended and provides a pathway to paid employment to lift them out of food poverty and sustain a crime-free lifestyle.

How does your project involve your community?

The idea for the project came from a group of 5 CP workers at the Greater Manchester Fareshare surplus food distribution depot. The idea was subsequently tested with other stakeholders - Brinnington pantry members in Stockport while they were doing their weekly shop; Greater Manchester CP Manager; Co-operative Group Head of Community Affairs; south Manchester Cooperative Group Member Pioneer Co-ordinator; the board of Foundations Stockport (https://www.foundations-stockport.org) who are the franchisors of 'Your Local Pantry' social franchise (https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk); Fareshare Greater Manchester (https://faresharegm.org.uk) and The Bread and Butter Thing (https://www.breadandbutterthing.org) CP workers will be involved in the delivery of the project through initial CP placements at Fareshare, Bread and Butter Thing and Stockport pantries, followed by completion of their CP unpaid work requirements at local Co-operative Stores and supermarkets, all of whom will be involved as CP placement hosts. Placements will be brokered and supervised by the Greater Manchester CP Manager and his team in partnership with pantry volunteers, Fareshare, Bread and Butter Thing staff and Co-op store management. Charitable donations by the Co-op to the pantries will be managed by Co-op Head of Community Affairs. A project steering group will be established with all the above stakeholders and chaired by Nornir.

Nornir have recently developed software that is being used in the compliance industry. The to be compliance in the private sector is an essential fact of life and in fact the requirements to be compliant evidence your compliance is set to increase rather than decrease.

Unfortunately, the Third Sector does not have the resources of the time to set up and evidence their compliance and therefore it’s often ignored. To help to overcome this problem we have adapted one of the commercial projects to allow the risk and compliance requirements to be set up by the user (organisation) without the need for expensive consultants and experts.

 We are currently looking for funds to help us develop the schemas that are required and have produced a promotional video to help promote the  work.

We have recently developed a simple and cheap e-commerce web site. The main aim is to allow individuals and small organisations to advertise and sell their goods and services without the need to buy into the existing expensive e-commerce web site developers.

Based in Gravesend, Kent, Chalk Garden Rail are a family run business selling G Scale model railway and table top wargaming items. They are also the only LGB Service Provider in the United Kingdom.

Our system provides a cheap (£10 per month) system that’s easy for the user to update and maintain.  It allows people to update their own information as and when they need to, thereby keeping costs down.

They system links automatically to PayPal but if required it can be set up to take payments via other secure methods.

See Chalk Garden Rail for an example of how the system works.

http://www.chalkgardenrail.co.uk/

Darkops are a small micro business who started trading in the autumn of this year (2015) after the disaster of redundency due to the closure of City Link. Steve Perry, the founder, having dreamed of starting a small business related to his passion of table top wargaming, took the plunge and Darkops is the result.

Being a member of and contributer to My wargaming Life, he contacted us and we provided him with our e-commerce platform. One of our hopes for this particular community is to provide small businesses, such as Darkops, who create niche products access to low cost tools like our e-commerce platform. There are many such micro businesses in and around the table top (and board games) wargaming hobby who produce highly detailed and intricate works, from sculptors to graphic artists, figure painters and scenic creators. small publishing houses and more. Aiding these enterprises can only help create jobs and add to our national economy.

To visit the Darkops website, follow this link: www.darkops.co.uk

Bridge Community Farms have just released their new Nornir developed web site at: http://www.bridgecommunityfarms.co.uk/

The Farm provides employment and volunteering opportunities for local people. It is also engaged with the local community using the produce of the farm to foster healthy eating habits.

We are hoping to use the development of the web site and the links with Bridge Community Farms to expand the concept of Urban Farms.  By setting up a farm that will work with ex-prisoners providing them with employment and volunteering opportunities will help them settle into a more stable life styles.