A volunteer at a food bank. Credit: HASPhotos / Shutterstock
The Alliance for Dignified Food Support launch new Dignity Toolkit to help community food support providers to embed dignity into food provision
A volunteer at a food bank. Credit: HASPhotos / Shutterstock
The Alliance for Dignified Food Support is a coalition of community food organisers, local food partnerships, academics, and activists committed to integrating dignity into food support provision.
Dignity can be negatively impacted by experiences of poverty and food insecurity, and The Alliance believes that accessing community food support such as food banks, community fridges, pantries and social supermarkets, should attempt to counter, rather than deepen, that loss of dignity.
This toolkit launch is timely, with over 2,000 community food support organisations across the UK working hard to support their communities, and 7.2 million adults experiencing food insecurity in June 2024.
The Alliance recognise that no type of food support, no matter how dignified, offers the solution to food insecurity, and also advocate for anti-poverty strategies including support for a living income through social security payments, increased wages and a cash first approach.
Work on the toolkit compliments their co-produced Principles and Recommendations and Dignity Charter, both available on their website.
The toolkit was developed by The Alliance working together with community projects, their service members, activists and researchers.
The toolkit is based on their four core Dignity Principles:
The toolkit is available for download on request as both a pdf and a google sheets document, and includes:
Since the Alliance launched, over 100 projects from across the UK have reached out to get involved. You can see which organisations are involved and join in via their 'work with us' map.
Sustain and the Sustainable Food Places network are part of the Alliance for Dignified Food Support and contributed to the development of the charter and toolkit. A recording of the webinar outlining the development of the charter and toolkit is available on the Sustainable Food Places website.
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