The Community Fund is used to open the farm gates to more than 1,500 people every year, including Bristol-based refugees and asylum seekers; people suffering with mental ill health; and local school children. Donations are also used to supply organic, nutritious food to people who wouldn’t normally be able to access it. Both through our own programmes and in partnership with frontline food charities.
The fund is generated by generous customers who choose to add a £3 donation to their order, or who choose to donate the value of their box to the fund when they go on holiday. Decisions on how the money should be spent are made by the farm’s Senior Team and are driven by our mission to enable more local people to take part in a food and farming system that’s better for health, communities, local wildlife and the climate.
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Thanks to the fantastic support of our customers, we have raised almost £3,400 over the past three months! The fund’s focus during that period has been on providing food to people in-need.
We have shared more than 4,000 meals’ worth of produce with FareShare South West for people in a wide variety of settings, from homeless shelters to safe houses and from school breakfast clubs to elderly people’s lunch clubs.
We have also given £635 worth of produce to St Werburghs Foodshare, a community-led service helping support local families with food.
Donations have also been used to support our ‘Go Organic’ scheme. During this period 35 households who wouldn’t normally be able to access organic fruit & veg have benefited from a regular delivery through a 50% subsidy supported by the fund.
‘I wanted to say thank you for the Go Organic scheme - I'm eating so much better and really look forward to my box each week.’ – Go Organic subsidy customer
A huge thank you to all of our customers who have contributed to the scheme.