Flocks Away!
Posted: December 14, 2011 Filed under: charity, environment | Tags: cyrenians, Environment, Food Leave a comment »Last week’s storm added to our homelessness problems at Cyrenians Farm. Just after 2pm, during the height of the gusts, one of our chicken houses relocated 100 metres and over a fence to the new orchard. This was an unplanned move and came as a bit of a surprise to us, but probably an even bigger one to the chooks sheltering within.
The farm letter to Santa will have to be re-written. Can you get a new chicken arc in a sack ?
From here...
...to here
A Hand Up, Not a Hand Out
Posted: October 3, 2011 Filed under: charity, Community, CSR, Cyrenians, environment, food, homelessness | Tags: Environment, Food, welfare benefits, Working with Businesses Leave a comment »FareShare has hit the media big time over the weekend. Cyrenians provides one of 17 services across the UK that together contribute to 8.6 million meals a year with surplus product donated by the food industry. Donated fresh food is quality checked and distributed by volunteers from our Leith warehouse to supply 43 charity kitchens around Lothian to supplement their food budget and add value to their menu. (“Aw no, not salmon en croute again,” a customer of a local shelter kitchen was famously heard saying to a delivery team!)
As the National Survey reports, we’re looking for more food donors in Scotland, more volunteers to help run the Programme and financial support so that we can increase the impact we’re making.
It’s a brilliant service: “A triumph of common sense,” as Sir Tom Farmer called it on one of his visits. Charities for the homeless have some decent fare to put in front of folk, as well as help and advice from our food team. Large quantities of food is diverted from land-fill. And dozens of people who were homeless are helping run the warehouse and delivery vans; helping their recovery while helping others. To that we add cookery classes for over 200 people a year and their carers. From Day One - back in the year 2000 – we’ve been determined that the Programme is a hand-up, not just a hand out. We want to see food used to bring people together and forward in their lives.
For that reason we’ve not publicised our limited work to date in distributing Emergency Food Packs to individuals and families who are receiving other services. We think we’d already be swamped by demand and this will certainly rise as the welfare reforms roll out.
But our Thinking Hats are firmly on again given the evidence of growing need. We welcome ideas and suggestions – even proposals – about how else to provide food help in tackling the poverty in our midst without creating dependence or tackling a mountain with a teaspoon.
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MITIE Good Partnership Announced
Posted: July 8, 2011 Filed under: Community, environment, homelessness, Work | Tags: Charity, Environment, Homelessness, Working with Businesses Leave a comment »It’s been so so hard to keep quiet about this! But we can finally announce a ground-breaking new partnership between Cyrenians and FTSE 250 firm, MITIE, the strategic outsourcing and energy-services company, to work together in taking forward CORE (Cyrenians Organics Recycling Enterprise)
Our motivation for seeking this partnership was for the CORE social enterprise – operating since 2009 and now in profit – to get the investment and business muscle it needs to survive and thrive in a very competitive and fast changing commercial market place.
CORE now has serious ambitions of being a UK market leader in taking food waste out of harmful landfill and into renewable energy, while generating new work-place opportunities for Cyrenians service users and income for investment in improving lives.
The better CORE does in winning customers and turning waste into an asset, the more benefit to the charity in our twin mission of improving lives and the environment. So if you work for a business or public organisation generating food waste, send your manager in CORE’s direction!
The process of establishing the partnership has demonstrated that both organisations – despite the difference in size and sector – share high standards, strong values and a passion for better futures. We look forward to a long and fruitful partnership with MITIE.
Cyrenians income from the growing CORE will be channeled into our ‘Enterprise to Employment’ programme that Cyrenians has developed over the last year with support from JPMorgan, who have been brilliant supporters, training and supporting people affected by homelessness back into a settled working life. (More about that in the next blog story).
see more about the CORE story in last September’s blog
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It doesn’t cost the earth to make a big difference
Posted: June 24, 2011 Filed under: charity, Community, CSR, environment, volunteering | Tags: cyrenians, Environment, Food, Volunteering Leave a comment »Last Monday saw ‘stakeholders’ gather at the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens for the launch of the report about what has been achieved there in just 18 months.
(R to L) Cyrenians Chair, Ian Jones, Tom Arnott (Operations Manager at the Royal Ed) and myself at the Gardens event
From being a wasteland there are 3 acres of land in full food growing production, beautiful woodland paths, an old orchard recovered and peaceful seating areas to just sit and enjoy the natural beauty of the place.
It has been achieved by an amazing combination of volunteers from all walks of life, local businesses, schools, community groups and people from the hospital itself. The place is a joy, as we heard at the event from some of the people who have contributed their sweat to it.
In times when we know there is not money around the Royal Edinburgh Community Gardens is a striking example of what can be achieved by connecting up the various assets already there in our community. Des
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This is not a story about cooking
Posted: May 31, 2011 Filed under: Cyrenians, Miscellaneous, volunteering | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Environment, Food, Volunteering Leave a comment »John had been in full time employment before he experienced his heart attack and had enjoyed married live for 30 years and owned his own home. As well as causing memory loss and diminished concentration, ill health had crushed his self esteem and crumbled his confidence.
John was referred to the Cyrenians cooking classes by a health worker. He arrived at Cyrenians Training Kitchen with his support worker. His nervousness was almost overwhelming. John had to be continually persuaded, for example, that the actual size of the vegetables he was cutting were fine. He was petrified that the sauce would be the wrong consistency or that the amount of tomatoes in his Bolognese made the colour incorrect or that his cake clearly hadn’t risen to the right height.
Cookery Classes @ Cyrenians Good Food
As the weeks of cookery classes progressed, John grew and grew with confidence. Constant re-assurance from the tutors and the evidence of what he could actually achieve brought about a transformation. As he relaxed and progressed to the advanced cooking course he opened up about himself and his feelings. He no longer needed his alarm to be set to remind him to do things.
His tutor summaries: ‘I think the class had brought him out and reminded him that there was a life out there and that people would be interested in him. He also discovered he was capable and perhaps just not as damaged by his heart attack as he thought. It was a pleasure to watch and witness his increasing confidence and to be a part of him feeling better about himself.’
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Our Letter to the Party Leaders
Posted: April 21, 2011 Filed under: charity, Cyrenians, homelessness, Miscellaneous | Tags: Charity, cyrenians, Environment, Homelessness Leave a comment »
Use your vote on May 5th
I am writing to the leaders of all the main political parties to ask about your continued commitment to maintaining and indeed improving the excellent progress we have seen over the lifetime of the Scottish parliaments since 1999 in tackling the causes and consequences of homelessness.
Scotland can be very proud of achievements to date. I have been visited by groups from Europe,Japan and North America due to the high reputation of our national strategies, our progress and ambitious targets to end homelessness. We can rightly claim to be a world leader in this. But the job is still far from done and there are strong signs of an upsurge in homelessness ahead and a deepening of the poverty that makes people vulnerable.
Establishing the Homelessness Task Force was one of the first actions of the newly established Parliament in 1999. Major improvements have been made through progressive legislation – with cross-party support – in 2001 and 2003, together with financial investment and strategic leadership from the Executive.
Of course there are many social problems to deal with, but how well a country protects its most vulnerable citizens from homelessness and supports them back into mainstream life is a significant measure of our effectiveness as a humane and successful society.
I acknowledge that homelessness is not a priority concern for the mass of the electorate, but I would ask you as leader to signal your support for tackling homelessness during your election campaign and carry that commitment into the life of the next Parliament.
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Friends in Deed
Posted: April 11, 2011 Filed under: charity, Cyrenians, environment, Homeless, volunteering | Tags: cyrenians, Environment, Homelessness, Volunteering Leave a comment »Among the many ideas pushing their heads into the spring daylight is one to create something like a local charity version of a freecycle-type scheme. It would enable people to donate the specific small but important things actually wanted by the people we work with as they rebuild their lives.
Claire, one of our Homeless Prevention Team, was telling me that Julie needs a bike so she can get fit as part of her recovery. Another client needs the use of a laptop as they prepare for college. Another needs help with moving to their new flat. In fact we have a constant supply of opportunities for people to be good neighbours and friends in deed. Something like this would connect the gift with the need through the assuring agency of the charity.
This idea resonated with me because I’m having more and more conversations with people who want to do something practical about the growing social injustice they see around them. And something that really makes a difference. Giving time is often a problem, which prohibits regular volunteering. Donations to large anonymous appeals and telethons just don’t do it.
I’d be very happy to hear from anyone with thoughts on this or wanting to help walk this idea forward towards becoming a plan.
In the meantime, thanks to sterling work from our regular volunteer, Kathryn McQuillan, we are now able to launch our new Friends of Cyrenians supporters’ scheme. Please do sign up if you can. Regular donors form the backbone of Cyrenians ability to help people in crisis and take independent initiatives.
Click here to sponsor me on Cyrenians Water of Leith Walk on April 16th
Think Global, Act Local
Posted: January 24, 2011 Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: Environment Leave a comment »I’m writing this blog entry 30 minutes before the official publication of the Global Food and Farming Futures report, but we know what it’s going to tell us.
Things are going to have to change drastically if we’re going to avoid increasing levels of global food poverty… even food and water wars. Like the climate change issue of a few years ago, there is now a growing but, I think, grudging acceptance of this in the West. It is so at odds with our day-to-day experience of the excesses of food around us and the ease of access and vast range of choice that most of us currently have.
Together with the three other modern Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Population Growth; Global Food Crisis will be a tough adversary, but the best start is to not ignore it.
I don’t need to make the case here. (I like Arvind Subramanian’s analysis and ‘solutions’; The global food crisis: A toolkit for audacious leaders). Like with the related and more recognisable challenges to a good and peaceful future, the issues are enormously complex and multilayered but also very simple. Things will have to change. We will have to change.
I have the privilege of being surrounded by live examples of local action that make change for the better. I’d love to see a Cyrenians Farm or Community Gardens at the heart of every town and city in Scotland, boosting local production and sharing skills and love of growing. Cyrenians Organics Recycling Enterprise (CORE) simply must be up-scaled nationally and developed as domestic food waste solution. Our FareShare service diverts usable surplus from waste and has developed inspiring ways of using it as a hand up for people in food poverty rather than just a hand-out.
There is a quote on the notice board in front of my desk: ‘Many small people, who in many small places do many small things, can alter the face of the world.’ (An excerpt taken from the Berlin wall)
We Are What We Eat
Posted: December 9, 2010 Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: Environment, Homelessness Leave a comment »It surprises some people that Cyrenians is at the table contributing to the National Food Policy development. We were invited to help puzzle out how to reduce inequality of access to good food for people on the margins.
Well, being homeless is about as excluded as you can get and our ten-year old mission to develop Good Food in Tackling Homelessness has informed and inspired changed thinking and practice in Scotland more than any other initiative of its type I can think of. Where there were depressing, shuffling soup kitchen lines in Edinburgh there are now decent eateries, offering not just better food but also respect to customers, and there is much more provision of opportunities for people to learn to enjoy good food as part of building up their lives.
I attended the National Food Conference – Tomorrow’s Menu – at the very grand EICC a couple of week’s ago and left disturbed by the disconnection between the appalling information we were being fed and lack of urgency and investment to do something about it: the huge public heath crisis associated with over-eating, the unsustainability of our consumption patterns, the ever growing inequalities in Scotland, let alone globally.
It’s a similar feeling to my utter disbelief that we (humanity) are not doing everything in our power to prevent the suicidal degradation of our planet/home.
Regarding these big issues my personal anti-depressant is working for Cyrenians. Relative to even little Scotland’s food challenge, what the Good Food programme is achieving is but a pea on the plate. But lots of peas can make a meal and lots of small change can add up real change.
The pictures here are from Peter Menzel’s collection on ‘What the World Eats,’ graphically demonstrating a family’s the weekly diet in different countries. The top picture is the Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp, Chad, the lower the Bainton family from Wiltshire.
A CORE Mission
Posted: September 15, 2010 Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: Environment, Working with Businesses 1 Comment »Cyrenians Organics Recycling Enterprise (CORE) is at a critical stage of its development as a social enterprise and really needs to raise profile and customers, so if readers have any customer leads or offers of help, don’t hesitate to push these for us or to get in contact.
CORE provides a segregated food waste system and collection service for restaurants, hotels, works canteens, food producers – anywhere that generates quantities of food waste. Hitherto this has gone into general waste and been sent to landfill. With CORE the segregated food waste is taken to composting – and, in future – to supply AD plants for producing energy. It is the first and only business service of its kind in Scotland and can play a major part in the country’s Zero Food Waste targets. The recycling service CORE offers is reliable and customer focussed, but most importantly is very competitively priced.
As if that wasn’t enough it is also providing traineeships for people on our budding Enterprise to Employment programme.
For participating commercial companies, like Radisson, and public sector customers, such as the Scottish Parliament, there’s a triple benefit of cost savings, hard evidence of carbon savings and contribution to CSR by supporting job creation and traineeships.
The challenge for Cyrenians is growing the customer base and income streams quickly enough to break-even in a very challenging marketplace. Our business offer is compelling and the requirements to meet carbon saving targets are pressing, but dealing in practice with food waste comes way down the list of a business’ priorities for the day!
CORE has huge potential to scale up its contribution to Cyrenians mission of creating a fairer, stronger and greener Scotland but starting and consolidating a new business is tough. For a social business it is even tougher and we need every bit of help we can get from friends and supporters over the next period in realising its potential.
