By Rachael Hayman

At the end of November we co-organised our second People’s Kitchen event with Oxfam Bath. This time we focused on our ‘global’ community in Africa in light of the UN climate talks in Durban. Rachael and Shane cooked some tasty African-themed food using entirely surplus goods acquired through Fareshare Bath, part of the wider Fareshare South-West group and Janine Woodward of Oxfam South West gave an insightful talk on how climate change is affecting Africa. Were even able to link up with Tom, a Green Vision member who was lucky enough to be at the UN climate talks in Durban, for a video conference to find out in real time how the climate talks were progressing.

It was a great afternoon spent learning about our ‘global’ community, sharing ideas on how we can support and empower them to take action and  of course eating! Check out Tom’s post as he reflects on his time spent at the climate talks.

Photo: Shane (far left) and Rachael (far right) chat to the Mayor of Bath and the Mayoress with a member of Oxfam Bath.

On Wednesday members of Green Vision met Tory of Foodcycle, a national charity facilitating the development of ‘community cafés’, using surplus produce from local businesses to cook nutritious meals. This is both a social project, dealing with food povery and building community, and an environmental project, aiming to reclaim some of the 400 000 tonnes of edible food that goes to landfill every year.

We visited the Bristol Foodcycle ‘Hub’ in February, which really impressed us. Although at first Foodcycle said they weren’t able to set up a hub in Bath, now, after interest from us, the universities and other local groups, Bath has appeared on their expansion plans!

Above you can see Jamie, our facilitator, obscuring Katy, one of those leading on this project. Luci, Henry and Tom from Green Vision also attended. Alexa (second from right) and Sarah from Bath-based organisation ‘Our Future Planet’ also attended and are very interested in getting involved. Tory is pictured on the right. Earlier that day she visited the volunteering co-ordinators at both of Bath’s universities.

This is a very exciting new venture and we look forward to working with Foodcycle in the future!