We opened Walton Vale Community Shop as a food co-operative during lockdown, providing food for a low fixed rate, ensuring people get healthy, nutritious food, while managing on lower incomes, saving them on average £45 a week, enabling them to pay for other essentials.
In 2021 we took over the shop building, creating a community hub, providing affordable food through our food co-op, a social space for people to meet, socialise, keep warm, learn new skills.
Our Trustees and volunteers have lived experience of issues faced by members such as loss of employment, health & physical disabilities, loneliness & isolation which has enabled us to develop pilot projects to address those needs. These projects are popular with our members and act as a catalyst generating new ideas, with members volunteering to pilot new activities. We use this model to grow and develop our programmes and volunteer base.
Embracing an ethos of sustainability we organise Swap Shops encouraging people to recycle and reuse clothing, books, household items. Engaging school children in making environmentally conscious choices through School Uniform Giveaways, we facilitate the exchange of no-longer-needed uniforms, aligning with our motto, "Swap before you Shop."
Our commitment to reducing food waste prevents over 1.5 tonnes of food from landfill weekly and provides access to healthy, nutritious food to members
We want to expand the work we do in the hub and the wider community to help build greater understanding of the importance of carbon reduction across the community sector through the creation of a coffee collective. We will work with our partners to demonstrate how we can reduce waste and recycle more using this natural resource as a super fertiliser. We will use the circular economy in this process by reusing the coffee sacks to collect the waste coffee grinds, we will reuse the containers to store the coffee grinds. The driver will collect the used coffee when the coffee beans are delivered. We will work with community groups to provide free super fertiliser and talk about the environment. We will work with Firefit hub and Torus Foundation, who will support us to educate young people on the environmental impact and the positive difference they can make.
