Leeds Food Aid Network, Foodwise Leeds and the West Yorkshire Food Poverty Network
Leeds Food Aid Network (FAN) exists to help bring different people, food providers, initiatives and institutions together who are involved in tackling food poverty in the city of Leeds. Leeds FAN is part of Foodwise Leeds, which is connected to a national organisation called Food Power and the West Yorkshire Food Poverty Network, which is connected to the national initiative Feeding Britain.
Leeds Food Aid Network, Foodwise Leeds and the West Yorkshire Food Poverty Network
Leeds Food Aid Network (FAN) exists to help bring different people, food providers, initiatives and institutions together who are involved in tackling food poverty in the city of Leeds. Leeds FAN is part of Foodwise Leeds, which is connected to a national organisation called Food Power and the West Yorkshire Food Poverty Network, which is connected to the national initiative Feeding Britain.
FoodWise Leeds is a city-wide campaign managed by Leeds Food Partnership which aims to unify, promote and celebrate the people, projects, organisations and businesses that deliver good food work across Leeds. It aims to have a broader focus stimulating dialogue and action on food in its entirety. Leeds FAN is the Food Poverty arm of FoodWise. Click here for more info. Embed – https://foodwiseleeds.org/about/
The West Yorkshire Food Poverty Network exists to bring together representatives from Calderdale, Kirkless, Leeds, Wakefield District, Bradford / Keighley to tackle food insecurity more effectively in the region. Key priorities include:
- The development of networks in each area, which bring together food aid providers along with agency workers and local authorities to enact practical collaboration on the ground. This involves representatives from Leeds Food Aid Network (FAN), Feeding Bradford and Keighley, Wakefield Food Aid Network, Kirkless Emergency Food Providers Network and Calderdale Food Poverty Forum coming together to share experiences and achieve common goals, including responding to the Coronavirus pandemic
- The tackling of the root causes of food poverty through effective signposting, on location support, usually in the form of debt, money, welfare support and healthcare advice and inputting into Feeding Britain the experiences of people on the ground in West Yorkshire to enable policy change.
- Development of effective signposting tools which are either online or paper based so that people can assess emergency food provision.
- See that food is distributed effectively across the region working with key food distributors such as FareShare Yorkshire and Rethink Food.
- Support the development of healthy holiday provision which includes local authorities working with the Department of Education and more independently run initiatives to provide food and activities to children during school holidays.
- Promote healthy start vouchers which have recently increased in value.
