MORE INFORMATION

• HOW DO WE HELP?

  Our social groups aim to enrich lives by offering activities that bring people together, build friendships and support networks. From our groups, we can build trust, understanding, and thus support where needed.

  Our Eco Market is open to everyone where they can access surplus foods and non-foods in exchange for a low contribution. From this project, we can also actively reduce and educate others about the environmental impact of food waste and how a good diet can improve health. We do this through the provision of advice, guidance, recipes, and information.

  All income from this project is rolled back into the organisation to purchase supplementary food, and ensure we can continue running groups, activities, and events.

  We believe in treating everyone with respect and pride ourselves on being able to listen with empathy and offer discreet support where we can. If we can’t help, we work together with other partnered organisations in our area to get people the support they need and deserve.

  Our aim is to continually listen, consult, and be led by the needs of our community.

• OUR PAST

  Although LCBC was originally formed simply to teach children, families and individuals the skills and knowledge to enable them to cook for better health, we have, over the years, adapted to meet the needs of our community.

  What started out as teaching within schools, community centres and for the local authority, this soon included sharing surplus food, then the development of our LCBC Community Pantry. We  opened this project at the beginning of March 2020, where we had to quickly adapt to face the COVID pandemic. We recognised that this had affected people financially and socially, so we diversified our pantry model by offering care parcels, delivered for free to those who needed them. Our fantastic team of volunteers not only delivered these boxes of essentials, but they also offered emotional support by staying for a chat, or offering telephone support to those who were isolating. Our Family Cooking Workshops were also adapted as recipe bags delivered personally to families’ homes. They could then cook the recipe at home together and help fill those long days with a fun, learning activity.

  When we were able to reopen, we used this time to listen and consult with local people, those accessing our pantry and other charitable organisations. We could see the need for a place in St. Helen Auckland where people could access various activities as well as being a place to ask for support.

  Following a long process, we eventually took over a local community centre (our LCBC Community Hub) where we gradually brought about events, activities and services that were in response to community input. We changed the name of our community pantry to LCBC Eco Market to reflect that it was one that aimed to actively reduce food waste whilst saving people money. Offering advice on using different foods to our service users helps to fulfil our aim. We also continued our cooking workshops, and I started to share recipes on our website to encourage the use of ingredients that have many nutritional benefits and again, reduce food waste.

  We went on to develop various groups, projects and events that aimed to build friendships, reduce isolation and build skills for all ages and abilities, all for a low contribution, thus making them accessible to all.

• IS LCBC A CHARITY?

  LCBC is a registered Community Interest Company. This model is similar to a charity in that we have a governing document detailing the objectives how we support our community, we have a board that shapes how we do this, and all income or funding has to be used to ensure we meet our objectives (as a non-profit organisation). Unlike a charity, we cannot rely on funding or donations alone and do need to bring in our own income.

  We do have some grants that help towards covering the costs to run our community hub, but we still need to raise and generate our own funding stream to cover costs such as activity costs, resources, food, transportation, insurances, health & safety contracts etc. Many of our groups, activities and events, such as our trips are not funded.

  This is where our income from the Eco Market, Pay As You Can contributions and general donations is needed.