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Help us choose a charity to support this festive season with our Instagram campaign
Chef Works is proud to support a number of great causes related to the hospitality industry all year-round, but as this time of year is a special time for giving, we want to give something extra back and make a donation of £1,000 to one of five charities close to our hospitality hearts. And we need your help to choose who.
This December on our Instagram page, we will spotlight five different causes that we believe deserve more support. The five causes we have chosen are:
1. Hospitality Action
Hospitality Action offers vital support to everyone who works in hospitality in the UK and who find themselves in crisis – be that through illness, poverty, bereavement, domestic violence, or isolation after retirement.
They raise money to pay for essential items such as food, equipment and central heating for those who need it most; supporting lonely retired hospitality workers and educating catering students of the dangers of drug and alcohol misuse.
This year they have been prolific in raising awareness of the mental health of hospitality workers, coming up with new ways to support those who suffer with poor mental health, and preventing the crisis from getting worse. And for that, we absolutely applaud them.
Hospitality Action works incredibly hard to be there for people in their hour of need. If you want to be there for them in theirs, like their post on Instagram.
2. The Felix Project
Free of charge, The Felix Project collects quality food from suppliers and then delivers it to charities so they can give vulnerable people a healthy meal or snack.
Founder Justin Byam Shaw set the charity up after his son Felix died suddenly from Meningitis in 2014. Felix was full of compassion for those without his advantages.
The charity is making a difference in London, where food waste and food poverty are two of its greatest scandals (nearly 400,000 people regularly go hungry in the capital). Charities who help them often don’t have the resources to collect food, and for supermarkets on tight margins, there is little incentive to ensure every potato or carrot is used. The Felix Project fills the gap, and now deliver 10 tonnes of food a week across London, which charities use to supply 20,000 meals.
A donation to The Felix Project would dually ensure that more people in London don’t go hungry, and that tons of food don’t go to waste. Like the post on our Instagram page to give them a chance of receiving our Christmas donation.
3. Chefs in Schools
Chefs in Schools exists to improve the health of children through better eating and food education. Think of it as a revolution in school food, led by chefs.
Co-founded by Henry Dimbleby (co-founder of Leon), Nicole Pisani (former head chef at NOPI) and Louise Nichols (head of the Leap Federation of Schools), the charity launched in April 2018 with an aim to train 100 professional restaurant chefs to work in 100 schools by 2023, transforming school lunches and providing cookery lessons for pupils.
It has already had success across three schools in Hackney, with two more London sites signed up.
Chefs in Schools is an excellent initiative that will ensure more children across the country eat well to positively impact their health and happiness. We believe that chefs have the power to inspire schools to get food right, and to get children to eat it – so if you’re passionate about this too, give them a vote with the like button on their Instagram post.
4. Toast Loves Coffee – The Real Junk Food Project
ToastLoveCoffee is a community café set up in a deprived area of Leeds, welcome to everybody, open for coffee, toast, breakfast, lunch, new connections and conversations.
It’s widely known that loneliness is a crisis in our country. TLC aims to create an environment where individuals can come and connect with more people, to combat social isolation. It also offers training and support for people who face challenges finding work.
It’s part of The Real Junk Food Project, a UK-based global movement to abolish surplus food. How? By intercepting food waste (damaged / past sell-by-date food) from supermarkets, hotels and restaurants, and using it as ingredients to prepare and serve in community cafés like TLC, schools and pay-as-you-feel ‘sharehouses’ across the country.
We love what TLC is doing to bring its community together, bonding people through shared experiences and healthy food, which would otherwise go to waste.
If you believe eating is about more than just nutrition, and that everyone should have the right to sit down to a meal with others and have conversations and connections, then show them some love on their Instagram post on our page.
5. The Springboard Charity
This Springboard Charity was set up to help young people achieve their potential and nurture unemployed people of any age into sustainable employment within hospitality, leisure and tourism.
Springboard works hard to build confidence and develop young people’s skills so they can succeed in a hospitality career; plugging the skills shortage we’re currently experiencing in the UK. They do it through education in schools, specialist careers advice and training, work experience and mentoring.
Our donation would help young people safeguard their future employment and give back to an industry that provides enjoyment to so many. The need to increase the potential talent pool entering the hospitality industry has never been more important, so if you care about the future of hospitality, hit the heart on their Instagram post on our page to give them the chance of receiving our donation.
We will give until the end of December for people to cast their votes on the five different causes. You can support with a like, comment or share, and the cause with the most support will receive the £1,000 donation from Chef Works in January 2019.
Keep an eye on our Instagram for more! www.instagram.com/chefworksuk