As the Cost-of-Living Crisis sets in, communities are looking for ways to support their most vulnerable to meet basic needs, such as through food provision.  This has led to a surge of new foodbanks and community meal providers.  However, without coordination and collaboration, these new community-based solutions could actually create more problems than they solve.

Like so many of our VCSE colleagues, we have been asking ourselves what can we do to support Norfolk residents during this challenging time?  Since early 2020, the Voluntary Norfolk Communities Team focused on developing and building networks for local voluntary and community organisation. To us, strong networks of like-minded people and organisations builds sector resilience and facilitates the sharing of expertise and good practice.  The cost-of-living crisis and other things may test the power and strength of our networks over the coming months. However, we strongly believe that these collaborative spaces (in real life and online) will be vital to supporting initiatives such as ‘warm banks’ and increasing knowledge about support available to the sector.

For this reason our next Empowering Communities online workshop, taking place on the Thursday of Conference Week, will focus on food provision:  what is already out there, what is needed and how to collaborate with existing providers.  We plan this to be first in a series of workshops where VCSE colleagues and volunteers can discuss emerging issues.  To help us keep these workshops relevant and topical, we are holding a drop-in event on the Wednesday of the conference to hear your ideas and suggestions – please do drop in and say hello!

Book here

Hear from The Feed, Nourishing Norfolk and other local organisations about their work providing affordable, accessible food to communities. This Good Practice Workshop on food aid and distribution initiatives in Norfolk provides a topical and timely conversation in light of cost-of-living concerns, with some interesting organisations sharing their experiences. Whatever your organisation or role, come along to discuss key challenges and opportunities for working together in these challenging times.

Click here for more details and to register for this online session.