The activities offered by St Thomas Community Food Hub over the last year were: - Community fridge, open Monday – Thursday 10am-3pm - Pay what you can lunch club, every Thursday 12.30pm – 1.30pm - Surplus soup making, Mondays 12-2pm - Cooking sessions and other educational activities - Craft workshops - Foraging walks - Coffee mornings - Swap Shop - Apple juicing project Most of these were existing initiatives, but we also developed some new activities and ran lots of one-off events. Our surplus soup making was a new activity, designed to use up vegetables leftover from the week before, and to make soup that could be given out via the community fridge. The cooking sessions we ran generally depended on what grant funding we’d received. For example, we had funding from Exeter Community Energy to run energy saving cooking sessions. We had funding from Hubbub to run a variety of activities to connect local people, including cooking sessions, coffee mornings and craft workshops. With our Food Hub funding we mainly ran cooking and baking sessions for children and families, in school holidays and after school. We continued to run our Walk & Cook foraging sessions but ran them on a pay what you can basis. We had approx. 250 people attending all our own events, not including lunch club. Our community fridge and lunch club are both now very well used, and most of our users are regulars who come most weeks. We have almost reached capacity as to how many people can fit in lunch club and have occasionally had to turn people away. One of the things that is most rewarding about lunch club is seeing the mix of people. We have people with different political and religious views sitting together having a conversation. Lots of our lunch club attendees have made friends, who they now meet up with at other times. Most fridge users come weekly, some come more than once a week, and others just come monthly. Generally, all the food is taken, and if we have anything left over, we use this to make surplus soup or other foods e.g. banana cake. Our community fridge and lunch club are probably reaching about 100 regular users, plus other less frequent visitors. We have gathered feedback from people attending all our activities at the food hub and this has shown that we have achieved the main aims of the food hub project, including: - Reduction in food insecurity – people have told us that the fridge helps them to eat more fruit and vegetables, and other foods that they would not be able to afford otherwise. - Increase in positive eating practices (including nutrition and cooking skills) – people attending cooking classes have said that they are eating more fruit & veg and plant-based food and they have gained new cooking skills. - Engagement with wider range of residents – we have run a range of different activities to engage with a wide range of residents, e.g. men’s cooking course, baby weaning workshops, and we know we are benefitting a wide cross section of the local community. - More sustainable model for access to affordable healthy food – our food hub is mainly run by volunteers, and we have demonstrated that our day-to-day activities including our lunch club and fridge can be run by our team of 20 volunteers on a weekly basis. - Connection/hook to improve access to other support services – we have always promoted many other services via posters, leaflets and social media, and work with other local organisations including the food bank, Wellbeing Exeter, St Thomas Health Centre, and local schools. Our feedback form that we send to people coming to events at the food hub was filled in by 51 attendees. This is mainly people attending cooking sessions but also includes lunch club and other events, not all food related. 100% said they enjoyed activities at the food hub and 100% said they would recommend them to others. 98% said coming to the food hub has encouraged/enabled them to eat more fruit and veg. 90% said it had encouraged/enabled them to eat more vegan/plant-based food. 96% said coming to the food hub had a positive impact on their health and wellbeing, and 90% said they felt more connected to their community. We have continued to work in partnership with a wide range of local organisations including Wellbeing Exeter, RAMM, Zero Mile Gardens, St Thomas Health Centre, Flow Orchard, Exeter Seed Bank, Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Inclusive Exeter, Birdhouse Words, Exeter City of Literature, Kurdish Women’s Group. This has included organising joint events e.g. craft sessions, running baking and cooking sessions, and also hiring out our venue for other group’s events in the evenings and weekends e.g. All Souls Day. These partnership events help us reach people, who we may not reach through our normal day-to-day activities. We currently get surplus food from FareShare South West, Exeter Food Action, Essentials Bank, Shillingford Organics, Olio, Zero Mile Gardens, as well as allotment holders and the general public. Over the year we rescued over 5 tonnes of food that would have gone to waste. Our food hub is run by a team of 20 regular volunteers, along with a part-time project manager.

No consultation with stakeholders

Maresa Bossano served as both a director and an employee of the Company during the year. In her capacity as Project Manager, she was employed for four days per week and received remuneration under a contract of employment for operational and management duties. This remuneration was paid solely for her employee role and not for her duties as a director. No remuneration was paid to directors for carrying out their statutory duties as directors.

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration