Boost Fund Stories: Coldstream Community Larder
Coldstream Community Larder
The Boost Fund is delivered by Corra Foundation and is a partnership between STV Children’s Appeal, Comic Relief, and Corra Foundation, and is supported by players of Postcode Lottery. Boost is currently open to applications and provides small grants for community-led organisations across Scotland supporting local people affected by poverty or disadvantage.
We initially set up the Coldstream Community Larder in September 2022, in order to help tackle demand on our local Foodbank. Achieving charity status in April 2023, we are heartened by the positive impact we seem to be having as our operations expand.
The Community Larder is run completely by volunteers and stocked almost entirely from donations from supermarkets, individuals and from surplus foodstuffs delivered by FareShare. We also have a small award-winning organic community garden and our extra room is used by the local youth club and other local organisations, giving something back to the town. Our hashtag is #feedbelliesnotbins and we work with our community to help save the planet!
We collect from 5 supermarkets and have two deliveries from FareShare each week – currently we save circa 200kg of produce a week, the equivalent of 10 tons per year, going to landfill. Any food not given out for free at our four sessions a week is normally fed into compost bins for the garden or given to locals who have chickens or other livestock.
“Only just moved here in temporary housing and got recommended to visit Coldstream Larder Community Hub – extremely friendly, helpful and warm welcome, thank you.”
At Christmas we provide hampers with food and gifts to families nominated to us by the NHS, social work, housing associations and organisations like Rape Crisis. These can make a big difference to families struggling over the festive season.
Some of our volunteers were larder users first and the team represents a very wide cross section of the community. We work with the local school to share our enthusiasm for the environment and hear what the children think is important. We have a suggestions box for users and volunteers to help shape what we do and we have achieved a Volunteer Friendly Award.
“…Lots of products to choose from. Very well run, really nice pleasant volunteers.”
Our green garden
Our award-winning garden is organic, nature friendly and managed by a small group of volunteers who ensure that the garden supports the larder to provide composting, demonstrates community fruit and vegetable growing and grows some fresh produce for the larder. We share gardening skills with the wider community, involving the local primary school children where possible.
We have recycling points on site for soft plastics, batteries, stamps, bottle tops, bras, printer cartridges, electronic gadgets, vapes, spectacles and blister packs, and work with local charity organisations to make sure everything is recycled.
The Boost Fund is extremely flexible and allowed us to apply the funding to many different aspects of what we deliver, including garden coaching, utility bills, hygiene products and our FareShare subscription. Because we were successful in obtaining funding elsewhere too, we have been able to use the funding to provide the small quantity of non-food items that we buy to assist those who come to the larder for economical rather than just environmental reasons. The Boost grant of £3,000 has also paid nearly three quarters of our annual FareShare bill, meaning 40+ tonnes of product is not going to landfill and we can continue our mission to #feedbelliesnotbins!
Many thanks to Coldstream Community Larder for writing this piece for us. Follow and find out more about Coldstream Community Larder:
Learn more and apply to The Boost Fund here.
