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The chief executive of a food charity that supports vulnerable islanders to eat healthily is calling for a centralised hub to coordinate their efforts and expand their educational programmes, while addressing the issue of food waste.
Caring Cooks, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, aims to tackle food poverty and support vulnerable families various education and community initiatives.
But, despite all their work over the last decade and growing demand, Yvonne Corbin has said that the charity still lacks a centralised base.
Ms Corbin says her dream is for the charity to set up an "educational hub" to allow Caring Cooks to expand their programmes and support various community groups, by offering kitchen facilities for daytime, evening and weekend use.
She said: "We've got to the position where we want to be with our programmes, we know the people that we need to support and the groups that we need to support. We're educating children, we've got a plan to extend that, you know, we were doing everything that we can."
Pictured: The team working on the Flourish school meals programme.
"But we can't keep scratching around for workspaces to be able to do this by knocking on people's doors saying, 'Oh, can we use your kitchen?'" she said.
"We need a kitchen during the day. We need a kitchen in the evenings. We need a kitchen at the weekend."
In addition to programme expansion, a central hub would also allow the charity to better address the challenge of food waste — by streamlining processes to repurpose wasted food and distribute it to vulnerable individuals and families.
She explained: "The issue of food waste is a difficult one.
"There are a lot of barriers to repurposing food – for instance, our sister company, Flourish, provides school food, and we're not allowed to take any waste off the premises for health and safety reasons."
Ms Corbin continued: "The question is, how can we turn wasted food into food for vulnerable people, food for the elderly, food for families that might be going through financial difficulty? How do we distribute?"
Her call comes just weeks after new Social Security Minister Lyndsay Feltham expressed her concern that more and more food banks were "popping up" in response to the demand from islanders in financial difficulty. Just last month, Safe Haven Church Jersey, which is part of the ministry of St Paul's Church, announced that it was now running a small food bank.
This is where a hub would really help, Ms Corbin explained.
"What we need is one central unit, so all suppliers bring whatever they have left over to us, and then it's converted into food."
Ms Corbin said they had "looked at everything available", including hotels that had closed down.
We need something like a community centre. We need something that's accessible to people that is central for people for it to work," she added.
"I am manifesting that we will find one one day. But it's going to take time, because we do need the right space, but we have massive dreams. And we're going to keep on going until we fulfil them."
Express spoke with Yvonne Corbin about her charity's journey over the last decade as it celebrates its 10th anniversary.
The Caring Cooks CEO outlined the widespread issue of food insecurity, and how families are turning to cheaper and processed foods amid what she describes as a "cost of living emergency".
Listen to the interview below or search 'Bailiwick Podcasts' on your favourite podcast provider...
Pictured top: Caring Cooks CEO Yvonne Corbin and team members from school meals programme Flourish.
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