North London Community Fund - Summary of projects

Groundwork takes practical action to create a fair and green future in which people, places, and nature thrive.

The REVIVE project held two online DIY/crafting workshops and one food waste session during their funding period, teaching residents from deprived areas how to reduce their household waste output. Working on the Grahame Park Estate, the project tackled problems of social isolation due to Covid by hosting online creative and practical activity sessions. 

The workshops taught residents the basics of upcycling and repairing their household items which diverts these items from the waste streams. Sessions included turning a wire coat hanger into a decorative wreath, making their own noticeboards from waste and a cooking class. 

Over the course of the project, Groundwork collected 175 fly-tipped or unwanted items for repair and reuse, with 162 of these restored and prepared for resale at affordable prices for local residents. The workshops engaged 14 households and 23 participants, while the project also recruited four new volunteers, helping to build community involvement and support the long-term sustainability of the initiative.

For more information on the great work Groundwork do, please see their website. 

Food Hall provides community meals using surplus food while creating opportunities for local people to develop cooking skills and become involved in supporting their community. Funding enabled the organisation to continue delivering community meals alongside a training, mentoring and accredited qualifications programme for community cooks, helping to reduce barriers to participation in community food initiatives.

The project aimed to ensure residents had access to nutritious food, tackle food waste, remain community-led, and contribute to building a more resilient and equitable local food system. Throughout the project, approximately 210 kg of surplus food was used each week to produce around 400 community meals, providing nutritious food for approximately 140 residents every week. In total, 3.2 tonnes of food that would otherwise have gone to waste was redistributed.

The project also strengthened community capacity by welcoming 77 new volunteers and enrolling 22 residents onto the community cooking scheme, around 30% of whom had experienced food poverty in the previous year. The training programme had a positive impact on participants' skills and understanding, with all participants reporting increased confidence in using surplus food and 100% stating they had a better understanding of the concept of food justice after taking part.

FEAST With Us is an organisation dedicated to tackling food poverty across London through sustainable, waste-minimising practices. During this project, the team worked with communities in Camden, Islington and Haringey to prevent malnutrition, reduce food waste and strengthen community cohesion by bringing people together to prepare nutritious meals using surplus food that would otherwise have gone to waste.

Over the course of the project, FEAST With Us established a zero-waste system across its organisation, ensuring that 100% of FEAST sessions operated without generating waste. The project significantly exceeded its target by preparing 19,661 meals using surplus donated food, driven by an increase in referrals and a greater volume of donated produce that enabled more frequent meal provision. In total, 10,071 kg of food was diverted from waste streams, while 3,547 single-use plastic containers were repurposed for food distribution. 

To further reduce food waste, the project purchased five composting systems and invested in additional materials and infrastructure to establish a sixth composting site. FEAST With Us also built partnerships with eight schools and community centres and five allotments, helping to expand its reach and embed sustainable food practices across local communities. Alongside these environmental outcomes, the project increased knowledge of food waste reduction among those involved, with 100% of FEAST employees and 80% of partner organisation employees reporting improved understanding and awareness of waste prevention practices.

You can read more about their work and see how you can support them by going on their website. 

Hackney City Farm offer children and grown-ups the opportunity to get up close to a range of farmyard animals. See, smell and plant vegetables and other food plants. Learn new skills to live a healthier, happier life with a lower environmental impact.

The organisation used their funding towards upgrading and adapting their 'Get Loose' project. They were able to improve their on-site shop to make it accessible during Covid restrictions and they engaged more residents with their zero-waste packaging ethos. 

As part of their adaptation to Covid restrictions they trialled the first zero-waste-deposit-scheme. They take online orders, wash reusable containers and fill them with plastic-free goodies then deposit them at a collection point where customers pick their orders up and leave their old containers behind for reuse. They worked in partnership with Growing Communities, a local fruit and veg delivery box enterprise. 

Additionally, they installed a display screen in the shop which circulated waste reduction events and tips to their 100,000 annual visitors. 

There's lots going on at Hackney City Farm from the Get Loose shop, to school visits- make sure you visit their website to get involved. 

Lifeafterhummus are a Community Benefit Society who provides food aid by operating a social supermarket and re-use centre for 80 local households and a redistribution network that supports 11 local hostels, 1 after-school club and a faith group. They also run passive clothing rails at 2 local nurseries, 1 local secondary school and 1 local library.

Lifeafterhummus received funding for their project 'Empowerment Initiative'. They delivered 14 Food Waste Cooking Club Socials and 4 London Clothing Swap events in Camden, aiming to engage residents in food waste prevention and textiles waste reduction. Surplus ingredients were collected by coordinators and volunteers on electric cargo bicycle, funded as part of the project.

The food waste element of the project involved hands-on nutrition and cooking classes, namely Food Waste Cooking Club Socials, especially for homeless and Just about Managing groups.

The clothing element of the project included tackling clothing waste by partnering with the founder of Swapaholics UK who agreed to let the group run monthly swaps on the third Saturday of every month from mid November 2018 to mid March 2019.

The project was strongly supported by a network of volunteers, coming primarily from BAME communities, who were involved in the collection of food and delivery of sessions. 
 

For more information visit their website. 
 

Groundwork takes practical action to create a fair and green future in which people, places, and nature thrive.

Groundwork received funding for their project 'CIRCLE', to run 20 upskilling workshops educating and empowering residents from deprived areas in north London to repair and reuse household furniture and textiles, rather than dispose of them. These workshops took place across two estates at their two well-established furniture reuse workshops, ‘the Loops’, on the Grahame Park estate in Barnet and the Pembury estate in Hackney. 

The aims of the project were to increase the confidence, capacity and skills of the local resident community to create and sustain positive behaviours into the future; enable residents to learn reuse skills who previously hadn’t thought that they would be able to participate; increase the number of bulky waste items diverted from landfill, compared to business-as-usual, creating a cleaner local environment, and establish a long-term behaviour change in community environmental behaviours relating to waste reduction (e.g. prevention of fly-tipping) and reuse. 

Overall, 20 workshops were successfully delivered through which 109 people were engaged of which 24 have progressed on longer term volunteering at the Loops. A total of 554 items were repaired and made available at low cost. 

For more information on the great work Groundwork do, please see their website. 

Freegle is an online platform that matches you up with locals who are getting rid of household items you need or vice versa.

The North London Community Fund awarded funding for their 'Give and Take' project. In different boroughs across north London, the events gave residents a chance to share unwanted goods with those who might need them. 

They hosted 4 'Give and Take' events during the year therefore diverting waste from landfill and promoting a circular economy 

Find out more on Freegles website. 

Bread n Butter are food educators teaching cookery life-skills whilst addressing health and social inequalities and barriers to healthy living.

Bread n Butter were funded to deliver their 'Waste Warrior' workshops in more schools across the north London boroughs. They expanded their reach to include Haringey and Hackney as well as Barnet and Enfield where they worked the previous year. The aim of the project was to help children and their families understand how they could live more sustainably and save money by wasting less food and by increasing recycling and reuse of certain materials, in particular plastic. 

Some behaviour change noted as a result of the workshop include: 

• 72% of pupils report not using plastic straws
• 95% reported that they have the intention to refuse plastic bags
• 75% say they re-use plastic bags or take bags with them
• 44% reported that less clingfilm is used at home
• 62% reported that they use either foil or re-usable containers in their pack lunch now.

For more information on the great work Bread n Butter are doing, please see their website.

Groundwork takes practical action to create a fair and green future in which people, places, and nature thrive.

The North London Community Fund awarded Groundwork funding for their project 'The Loop@Grahame Park'. The Loop is a reuse ‘hub’ out of which dedicated staff and local residents run an electrical items & furniture collection and re-sale service. The Loop not only directly reduces items entering the waste steam by collecting unwanted items from local households and from fly-tipping locations, but also engages with local residents and has been shown to change peoples’ understanding and behaviour in relation to waste generation.

During the funding period, 338 unwanted furniture items were collected (equivalent to 5.27 tonnes of waste) and 374 items were sold to residents at a discounted rate, resulting in £5,614 income from sales and commissions. These sales were used to further the social value work of Groundwork and give back to the community they serve. This project taught residents the skills of reuse and upcycling and promoted the circular economy.

For more information on the great work Groundwork do, please see their website. 

Lifeafterhummus provides food aid by operating a social supermarket and re-use centre for 80 local households and a redistribution network that supports 11 local hostels, 1 after-school club and a faith group.

Lifeafterhummus received funding for the 2018-19 funding year to deliver 14 Food Waste Cooking Club Socials and four London Clothing Swap events aiming to engage residents in food waste prevention and textiles waste reduction respectively. Surplus ingredients were collected by coordinators and volunteers on an electric cargo bicycle, funded as part of the project. The electric cargo bicycle was also used to transport items for the monthly swap and to take items that could no longer be used to the recycling centre in Kentish Town. 

408 people attended the 12 food waste workshops and 1.8 tonnes of food waste were directly diverted as a result. As for the clothes swaps, 88 people attended the four events and 30kg of textile waste was diverted. Qualitative feedback indicated that 94% of the attendees are going to reuse, repair or upcycle as a result of attending the events, all of the respondents reported that they will be sharing their learnings with others whilst 93% believe that their attendance at the events saved them money. 

For more information about Lifeafterhummus please see their website. 

The Restart Project helps people learn how to repair their broken electronics, and rethink how they consume them in the first place.

They were awarded further funding for the 2018-19 financial year to expand their project from the previous year into more boroughs across north London. Last year they created a map of reliable repairers across the boroughs of Camden, Hackney and Waltham Forest. This year, they expanded their reach to Barnet, Enfield, Haringey and Islington therefore continuing their work on enabling residents to access repair and diverting their items from landfill. 

Found out more about the work Restart do and their upcoming repair events, on their website.