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.

Development of the growing area at Forever Fields

Nornir have been busy working with other stakeholders at Forever Fields in Manchester. To date we have arranged for a team of Community Payback workers to visit the site each Monday where they are working creating a new growing space. The results so far are shown in the photo above. So the growing of food has started at Forever Fields  - but its next season before we get full crops.

In the kitchen at Forever Fields, we have already cooked 186 ready meals using surplus and donated foods. This has been achieved using a chef and 2 community volunteers as well as CP workers helping out in the kitchen.

We have plans to continue to cook ready meals at the site and donate them to local Pantries via our links with Eat Well Manchester: https://www.eatwellmcr.org/

Our plans have been helped because Forever Fields are now appointing a full-time centre manager to help coordinate all the activities at the centre.

There has been development at the site with a base being built for the container that will be used to grow mushrooms. The plan is to use the mushrooms in the ready meals as a way of providing protein without resorting to cheap meat.

The major barrier at the moment is accessing enough surplus foods for the cooking. We are in talks with a range of other organisations who are involved in austerity retail to see how we can over come the problem. One possibly activity is to join a Gleaning later in the year where we can gather a large crop of some specific vegetables.

We are also pursuing links in regarding to developing a vermiculture presence on the site. This has been mostly with the experts at Egino Emerging: https://www.eginoemerging.org/

Ready meals waiting collection

Pilot production run on the 3^rd June 2024 produced 59 meals for donation to foodbanks, community pantries etc through the charity Eat Well Manchester https://www.eatwellmcr.org/

A chef and 2 community volunteers were joined by 2 volunteers from the Monday UPW team (Community Payback Scheme) who worked as kitchen assistants preparing ready meals from the produce grown and supplemented by donated and surplus produce.

One of the aims was to produce a nutritious and eco friendly meal to help combat both food poverty but also protein poverty. As such we substituted meat with mushrooms with a mixture of seasonal vegetables.

The next pilot production run is planned for 24^th June 2024 with 120 meal target, then every Monday thereafter (surplus and freshly grown food supplies permitting).

Further sessions are planned as we now seek additional surplus foods from the community and local businesses.

 The work is funded by the National Lottery Awards For All Programme

GM Foundational Innovation Fund

Our Phase 1 project demonstrated that, not only is Probation a key service of the Foundational Economy and also that people on probation can be key workers themselves.  This is achieved by increasing the innovation capacity and sustainability of organisations working in and with the Foundational Economy, specifically those in the ‘Austerity Food Retail’ sector.

‘Austerity Food Retail’(AFR) refers to local pantries, social supermarkets and other forms of cooperative and community shops offering highly discounted products to people in food poverty. They usually make use of donated and surplus/rejected foods which would otherwise be thrown away.

Our Phase 1 project in 2023/4 successfully provided Stockport Homes’ austerity retailer ‘Your Local Pantry’ https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk/  with proof of this concept. It created a means of retailing more locally produced non-surplus healthy food to its members to supplement the dwindling supplies of often poor-quality surplus and donated food available to them, without having to raise their weekly membership fees to pay for it.  Phase 1 did this by working with people on probation who are subject to an Unpaid Work requirement of a Community Order (‘Community Payback’) to:

•      grow fresh seasonal fruit, vegetables, and salads on unused/under-used public land in Stockport for onward donation to the Pantries.

•      assess the feasibility of manufacturing value-added food products from the produce grown for onward donation to the Pantries.

Our new Phase 2 project (April 2024 to June 2025) builds directly on Phase 1 aims and deliverables by

• Our model/business plan, of using CP to grow fresh produce for donation to the pantries to generate new income streams from commercial production will continue and develop. This will enable them to continue to bulk-buy their own supplies of locally produced non-surplus healthy food.
• Rolling out the Model of at a further 3 sites in Stockport, Manchester and Trafford, thus supplying AFR in Greater Manchester with locally produced healthy non-surplus fresh food free of charge.
• Enhancing the model with the commercial production of mushrooms. Facilitating the manufacture of value-added food products from the produce grown in the form of:

1. Frozen healthy ready meal production at each hub, also for onward donation to AFR.
2. Using mushrooms as a meat substitute from freshly grown mushrooms at each hub for use in the ready meals.

• developing training and progression routes into employment in the food and retail sectors of the Foundational Economy for people successfully completing their Community Payback on the project - helping plug the ‘skills gap’ in the food and retail sectors of the Foundational Economy.

Awards For All Logo

 Food poverty exacerbated by the cost-of-living-crisis is a growing problem across the UK. New initiatives are therefore needed to bridge the resulting food gap. In 2022 we used Awards for All funding to do this by enlisting Probation Services Community Payback Teams (CP) to set up and run community growing spaces. This provided a model of good practice for combating food poverty by growing fresh food for donation to pantries https://www.yourlocalpantry.co.uk

This was a great success but one of the key lessons learnt was that just growing fresh food is not enough. Often people in food poverty are not equipped to use fresh foods to create healthy meals and are thrown back onto reliance on cheap unhealthy ready meals eg surplus potatoes  swapped for tins of beans and other ultra processed foods. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/02/uk-families-eating-less-healthily-due-to-cost-of-living crisis#:~:text=Overall%2C%2061%25%20said%20the%20cost;due%20to%20stress%20(15%25)

 This reliance on cheap unhealthy foods has negative impacts. 1) it increases obesity rates in the UK https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/dec/25/england-obesity-report-analysis 2) The production of the cheap meats that are often used is contributing to the problem of climate change. https://www.gfi.org/resource/a-global-protein-transition-is-necessary-to-keep-warming-below-1-5c/

So we will now  build a model of good practice that not only continues CP-supported healthy fresh food production, but also processes it into healthy ready meals prepared by CP teams and distributed through Pantries. CP teams will also be trained in mushroom cultivation to replace the use of cheap meat in the ready meals. Mushrooms provide all the same necessary proteins as meat, but don’t have the same carbon footprint associated with production of cheap meat. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/oyster-mushroom-benefits#4.-May-promote-blood-sugar-regulation During Covid ready meals were produced by community kitchens but this stopped at the end of lockdown due to lack of volunteers and supplies. The cost-of-living-crisis means they are needed again to combat food poverty, so we’ll reopen these facilities and begin by producing 100 meals per week over 3 sites.

Leeks growing for the food banks

In 2022 Nornir helped to set up a new Social Enterprise called Egino Emerging. Egino works in HMPPS Accredited Premises in North Wales supporting the prisoners with their adjustments to being released.

Volunteers who are ex prisoners them selves have established gardens at the AP and have grown food for themselves and donated the surpluses to local Food Pantries.

Part of the work has involved setting up organic fertiliser production called vermiculture through the building of wormeries. This uses worms to eat waste products and turn it into fertiliser that can then be used back in the gardens.

Training books on how to set up a wormery has been written and can be read on the Egino web site at: https://www.eginoemerging.org/post/how-to-start-worm-farming-in-wales-community-gardens

Or you can download the book for free from the link below.

https://books2read.com/u/bWYP5D

There is also a Welsh Language version of the book at:

https://books2read.com/u/bp1KXJ