CHAIRMAN’S NOTE

Another year has passed and the causes that we support both in the UK and India still require assistance more than ever.

Despite general inflation rates easing slightly over the last 6 months in the UK, food price inflation has risen significantly and remains a major pressure point for households leading to more reliance on food banks, food pantries and free community dining.

In India the continuing social and cultural taboos surrounding menstruation and the lack of education in this area remain largely unaddressed causing health risks, school absenteeism and its significant effect on education, limited access to sanitary products and gender inequality – affecting millions of young girls. Sanitation in schools, especially in rural areas, is truly shocking with toilets often unusable or absent and washing facilities the same.

So despite the efforts of many amazing organisations in both countries there is the constant need for help. Below is a brief summary of where we targeted our resources last year and how we hope to move forward in the 12 months ahead.

FINANCIAL SUPPORT

We are insistent that all our donations are restricted and only used directly to tackle the provision of nutritious food to those who require it – not swallowed up to cover the running costs as these do not fit into our charitable purposes.

COMMUNITY COOKING, PANTRIES & FEEDING PROGRAMS

There are many wonderful charities out there providing nutritious food and food education to a wide range of people who find themselves in need – whether making meals for hostels, schools and community centres or having community shops and food banks offering cheap or free food allowing people in need to put food on the table for their families.

We are happy to support these organisations  and appreciate not only the nutritional benefits but also other aspects in building community support, preventing isolation and offering signposting to benefits and assistance with job applications that otherwise would not be accessible.

VOLUNTEERING

We love getting involved and seeing first-hand how the organisations, we support, perform  the amazing services they deliver. Whether chopping a ton of spuds, washing up endless pots and pans or picking surplus apples in an orchard on a lovely sunny day it is always extremely rewarding and a great endorsement that any donations are being utilised as expected. Of course, the reasons they exist is never overlooked and we would hope the need for their services would reduce over time but right now they are as important as ever.

GLEANING

Our interest in Gleaning, the act of rescuing surplus food from farms, was piqued a couple of years ago and continues to be an area of great interest to us.

Each year roughly 3.3 million tonnes of food is wasted on farm which makes up about 15% of the country’s total food waste. The value associated to this wastage is close to 2 billion pounds. There are many reasons for this with retail standards resulting in the rejection of perfectly edible goods, over production, demand uncertainty and economic restraints on farmers costing more to produce the goods than the actual retail value being amongst the main contributing factors.

This waste is often used as animal feed, sent to anaerobic digestion or ploughed back in to the field with only a small amount being rescued and redistributed to those struggling to feed themselves and their families.

There are a number of localised gleaning groups spread across the country doing their very best to rescue a lot of this surplus but this is still a small fraction of what is available.

Of course there are many factors that inhibit more gleans – reluctance of farmers to have people on their land with little time to assist and concerns over health and safety risks, lack of volunteers, transport costs and many more.

Last year DEFRA announced a Tackling Food Surplus at the Farm Gate scheme providing funds to a number of applicants to assist in their great efforts to re-distribute this

Amongst the recipients was a collective of gleaning groups, headed up by Sussex Surplus & Foodrise, and we have been happy to assist where we can with some support in purchasing equipment and volunteering with the gleaning itself.

UK CHARITIES/ORGANISATIONS WE HAVE HELPED THIS YEAR

We have offered financial assistance and spent time with The Felix Project, Akshaya Patra UK, Made In Hackney, Feast With Us, The Lunch Club, Streatham, The Whittingham Experience Project, Go Dharmic, Still Good Food

THE YEAR AHEAD

More assistance will be offered to community kitchens, food banks & food pantries, feeding programs and school food clubs and we are always happy to receive requests from organisations tackling food poverty and food insecurity issues.

One new initiative we will be supporting is the Empower Hour program offered by Akshaya Patra UK, an award-winning after-school programme, providing nutritious meals and targeted tuition to the UK’s most disadvantaged children. It bridges the hunger and nutrition gap with hot and healthy meals as well as additional after school education to those school children most in need who are falling behind, often unlikely to receive a meal at home and as a consequence unable to be at their best to concentrate at school.

With the National Gleaning Network now having no main coordinator we will be actively looking into areas where we can assist in not only promoting this ancient, and vital, practice but hopefully assisting any new groups that may need help when starting out and of course getting out in the fields to assist where we can.

Over the past year we have continued to grow our School Improvement Program in Rajasthan, funding the RASM (Right to Access Sustainable Menstruation) program in 5 more schools and the installation of toilets and sanitary incinerators in 3 schools as well.

In addition we have increased our school feeding program, now providing hot and nutritious meals to the school children in 10 schools in the Rajasthan area.

RASM (Right to Access Sustainable Menstruation)

The program addresses Access, Availability, and Attitudinal barriers in order to –

‘Promote healthy and eco-friendly menstrual hygiene practices. The project was designed to create a sustainable adoption pathway for menstrual health and hygiene by breaking down existing obstacles and fostering long-term behavioural change’

The taboos and misinformation surrounding this delicate subject means that school days are often lost, health issues are many and frictions and poor treatment of young girls in the home are still very prevalent.

By offering this education program, led by fully trained youth leaders, to both girls and boys alike progress is slowly being made to breakdown the existing barriers and ensure that family life, health and education both flourish.

The program has been successfully delivered and the impact reports show how knowledge, awareness and best practices increase significantly.

SCHOOL FEEDING PROGRAM

We have continued to fund yearly school meals to the 386 children at the Pahadganj School in Ajmer through Akshaya Patra’s School Feeding program. Whilst the government do provide food to schools it really is very basic and the role that Akshaya Patra play is to ensure that school meals are nutritious and, not only encourage children to actually come to school, but also ensure their bodies and minds are in the best condition to get the very most from the classroom. From their hi-tech kitchens they provide millions of meals to school children each day and during the last year they proudly delivered their 5 billionth meal – truly astonishing work.

..THE YEAR AHEAD

With the School Improvement Program now established and a good relationship built with OneStage in project managing the builds and overseeing the successful RASM program, it is really about expansion of the program and finding more schools in the area that would benefit from our help. It goes without saying that there are many. We have already found 8 new schools that will benefit from the RASM program and new toilet installations.

We are expanding the Akshaya Patra School feeding program to 9 new schools which will ensure a further 390 students are fed and given the nutritious food they need to maximise attendance throughout the year, enhance concentration levels and offer the best possible conditions to support their educational journey.