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CFHS Blog

Edinburgh Community Food’s Cash First Journey: Developing and Launching the Cash First Toolkit

In this blog post, Chris Mantle tells us about Edinburgh Community Food (ECF)’s cash first journey. “One of the biggest challenges facing people in poverty is the stigma. Granting an individual the right to use cash or vouchers puts the individual in charge of what they spend the money on. But this is also about …

Posted in CFHS Blog | Area of Work: |

Zero Waste Cooking Day

Martin Carle, Community Food Initiatives North East (CFINE)’s Sustainable Food Co-ordinator tells us about a cooking day: As part of the recent ‘Climate Week North East,’ CFINE and Granite City Good Food held a zero waste cooking day on the 20th March. The workshop invited members of the community to come along to Cook at …

Also posted in CFHS updates | Area of Work: |

Challenging poverty in Glasgow

Challenging poverty in Glasgow Challenge Poverty Week is coming up. (2 -8 October)2, which aims to challenge the injustice of poverty and show how collective action can help. One of its five policy asks is around food, ‘A Scotland where no-one goes hungry’. Many community food initiatives work in collaboration with others to address poverty. …

Also posted in CFHS updates, News |

Community food and local food partnerships

In this blog post we show how the community food sector is playing a role in the development of Sustainable Food Places (SFP) in Scotland and how SFP aims can contribute to plans for Scotland to become a Good Food Nation. The community food sector can play a key role in local collaborative work, and …

Also posted in CFHS updates, News |

Beyond food banks

The Scottish Government recently published Cash First: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland. In this blog post, we highlight a few examples of what community food initiatives are already doing to contribute to the actions in this Plan. Larger organisations such as Community Food Initiatives North East (CFINE) and Lanarkshire Community Food and …

Also posted in News, Recruiting and working with vulnerable groups |

A move towards healthy and more environmentally sustainable diets

The Rowett Institute at the University of Aberdeen is conducting a study which will explore healthy and more environmentally sustainable diets in Scotland, focusing on the consumption of red meat with the aim to shift towards plant based foods. Here, the Rowett Institute explains the focus of the study planned for 2023. Cutting down on …

Posted in CFHS Blog |

Guest blog: Impact of the Covid-19 lockdowns in service providers’ perspectives of the food insecurity of families with school-age children in Scotland

David Watts and John McKenzie from the Rowett Institute, University of Aberdeen discuss findings from their research during the Covid pandemic: In 2021, with Scottish Government funding, we interviewed staff and volunteers working to provide emergency food supplies to families with school-age children during the Covid-19 lockdowns. We had two aims. First, to understand how …

Also posted in CFHS updates, Covid-19 |

How does community food work link into local policy?

The CFHS programme has been working with the Scottish Government and community food networks to map strategic and practical support for community food activities across Scotland. As part of this, we looked at how community food work fits into local government, Health and Social Care and other key local policies. We found community food activities …

Also posted in Policy news |

Guest Blog post: Make sure your views are heard on ending the need for food banks

In our guest blog post, Brenda Black from Edinburgh Community Food gives us reasons on why we should respond to the Scottish Government consultation paper on ‘Ending the need for food banks’ and gives us a few tips to help us. How does the draft national plan hope to succeed in ending the need for …

Also posted in CFHS updates |

Guest blog: Katy Gordon discusses the different approaches that two local areas in Scotland took to tackle food access and food insecurity last summer.

In March 2020, like many people, we, as researchers with an interest in food insecurity in the UK, were hugely concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the national lockdown on households’ access to food. It was clear from the outset of the pandemic that need for support with food access was rising …

Also posted in CFHS updates, Covid-19, Covid-19, News | Area of Work: |