Social media has the power to bring communities together, as the Foody Friends group – based in Poole – has proven.
What do they do?
Admins of the Facebook group encourage members to help the community out by sharing and donating extra food. This could include spare portions in a freezer, tins gathering dust at the back of a cupboard, or food going spare that will otherwise enter the food waste bin.
They provide homemade meals to anybody in BCP who cannot afford them or who cannot cook because of extreme circumstances like chronic illnesses or bereavement. Volunteers will then buy and cook the ingredients for a well-balanced meal, taking note of dietary requirements.
Members of the group needing meals will then request food parcels and meals which volunteers post about on the feed.
How can they help?
Lizzie Jane, admin of this life-saving Facebook group, said: “The Cost of Living is crippling everybody, but we hope we have encouraged people to share.
“What we try to do is encourage members to help other people more, and to see more people cooking and sharing.”
Lizzie said that after an excess of selflessness emerged during the pandemic, there was a perception that comm-unity spirit had died down. Foody Friends was proof of the opposite: that people are willing to help.
One of their main aims is to encourage members to cook more and to grow fresh vegetables. Considering not everybody has access to cooking materials, the team at Foody Friends acknowledge developing a nutritious diet for the whole family can sometimes be difficult.
What difference have they made?
Recently, the support of members allowed one family access to more than a week of lunches and dinners.
Lizzie added: “The family had a lot of worries, so they asked if we could take the cooking away from the problem just to help them out. Another family was unable to go shopping due to injury, so we helped them out just as we do with anybody facing extreme circumstances like chronic illnesses or bereavement.”
“Kindness costs nothing,” Lizzie said. “And showing kindness to others is priceless.”
Foody Friends are looking for more volunteers to join their group, which currently has over 200 members on Facebook.
Photo credit: Lizzie Cook
Article by Lewis Eyre
