We Love Food and Hate Waste

St. John's Youth Club in Angel. Source: Paul Grant

Voluntary Action Islington is committed to help minimise the amount of household food and drink waste in the borough

Islington teenagers are aiming to become ‘Food Waste Champions’, by attending a training session which covers the background to, and issues around, food waste. The key behaviours are helping reduce food waste and support on engaging with others in order to pass the message on. Voluntary Action Islington and Love Food Hate Waste have been working closely to organise the first workshop for 11-16 year old girls that was held on March 14, at St John’s Youth Club in Angel. 

Beverley Dean, the Chairman of the Club, had this to say: “The evening was terrific. The feedback has been very positive and the girls really enjoyed themselves and learned a lot”.

“We are currently working with the girls in relation to healthy eating, cooking and budgeting and would now like Love Food Hate Waste to become a permanent fixture on the programme”.

More details about the initiative can be found at http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/

Paul Grant (Project Officer for Love Food Hate Waste)

Voluntary Action Islington at the Sustainable City Awards

Voluntary Action Islington is committed to sustainability - of both the physical environment and civil society

We should not destroy valuable resources that we might never be able to replace. At the resource centre we operate on Pentonville Road we therefore took advantage of the comprehensive eco-audit offer which was part of the Greening the Third Sector project run by City Bridge. 

Following the audit we have implemented changes ourselves. These include reducing electricity consumption and switching to a maintenance contractor who travels by bike. We have also made resources available to others on our website.

We were therefore pleased to enter the Sustainable City Awards and attended a great evening at the Mansion House, where we met many people from businesses and charities who are putting into practice environmentally sustainable initiatives. 

For me it was surprising to find that quite small initiatives could make a big difference. For example one of the runners up was the “shut the shop door campaign”-a campaign that resulted in both energy saving and improving conditions for people working in shops. 

It was noticeable that charities were represented across the award categories. And I learnt that currently the main area of growth in the economy is in products and services promoting environmental sustainability.

Mike Sherriff (Chief Executive)

Voluntary Action Islington gets blogging

Mike Sherriff, with friend Kajol Chatterjee, at Shahbag, Dhaka. Source: Mike Sherriff

One of our aims is to mobilise our members to influence change. 

And at a time of rapid change, much of it not very positive for our members and the people who rely on their services, we should be using all the means we can to try to influence what is happening.

We agreed to start a blog and a few days later I got on a plane to Dhaka, Bangladesh. And in the centre of Dhaka a whole new social movement was developing, created using face book and blogs (the Shahbag movement). 

This certainly demonstrated to me the power of social media to mobilise a huge crowd of people to protest. 

But blogging can also be risky and a few days later one of the bloggers, Ahmed Rajib Haidar, was hacked to death, allegedly by student religious fanatics. More recently several bloggers have been arrested.

Our blogs are unlikely to be so powerful or to carry such risk for the bloggers. But they should be a space for conversation and dialogue about what is happening locally and give a voice to views that are not necessarily prominent in other local media. I hope that they can also be a tool that will mobilise our members to demand a fairer Islington.

Mike Sherriff (Chief Executive)