Watch: Pledges to support Liverpool Good Food Plan
Churches, charities and community groups in the Liverpool city region are encouraged to watch and share this video featuring just some of the pledges made in support of the Liverpool Good Food Plan - and consider offering your own pledge.
Together Liverpool have joined the Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes, Archbishop Malcolm McMahon and many other organisations and individuals across the city in pledging to support the plan, to help create a city where everyone can eat good food.
Last month we co-hosted a pledge evening with Feeding Liverpool in partnership with Liverpool Cathedral, which was attended by more than 300 people online and in-person at the Metropolitan Cathedral.
Businesses, community groups, organisations and residents from across the city were invited to publicly pledge their support for Liverpool’s Good Food Plan.
Among the public pledges on the evening Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods Cllr Abdul Basit Qadir pledged £150,000 from the local authority towards Liverpool’s Good Food Plan.
Feeding Britain pledged £30,000 for the development of community food spaces across the city, and the Trussell Trust pledged to fund the role of a Development Worker within the Feeding Liverpool team.
We were delighted to help film this video as part of our Network of Kindness project to support the growth of social justice across the Diocese of Liverpool area, with the first pledge from BBC Radio Merseyside's Paul Beesley who compèred the evening,.
Other pledges came from the VS6 partnership and Micah Liverpool of which our Chair Canon Ellen is also Chair, FoodCycle Liverpool who pledged to establish two new community food spaces in the Liverpool city region, Liverpool Food Growers Network, Walton Youth and Community Project, and representatives of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service.
The Liverpool Good Food Plan is a five-phase strategy, which hinges on empowering people to work collaboratively to create systemic change.
Pledge examples include promising to signpost people to where they can access good food, commit to paying all employees a real living wage, start up a new sustainable food business or project, take part in food insecurity screening, volunteer, share resources, or simply start conversations in your community.
Together Liverpool's Social Action Lead officer Kate Eaglestone made a pledge on behalf of Together Liverpool to support the Good Food plan as we grow the Network of Kindness across the Liverpool City Region and beyond.
Our pledge supports that made by Bishop Paul before the event, to support the workforce and parishes in the Diocese of Liverpool to take part in the Good Food Plan’s food insecurity screening programme for organisations, to help find out more about the scale and nature of need in the city.
Co-ordinated by charitable food alliance Feeding Liverpool with backing from Liverpool City Council and a dozen other partners in the city’s Food Insecurity Task Force including the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services (LCVS), St Andrew’s Community Network, Torus Housing, and FareShare, it is initially focused on tackling the immediate problems of acute hunger and chronic food insecurity.
Working with a growing number of stakeholders across the city, the Good Food Plan will also focus on improving access to good food, enabling active citizenship, influencing policy, reducing food waste and environmental impact, and establishing sustainable food systems.
Host for the pledge evening was Paul Beesley from BBC Radio Merseyside. Speakers included Canon Tony O’Brien, Dean of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and Very Rev Dr Sue Jones, Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. You can watch a livestream from the evening here: Liverpool's Good Food Plan Pledge Event - Feeding Liverpool
Also speaking were Cllr Abdul Basit Qadir, Liverpool City Council’s Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods; Melisa Campbell, consultant in Public Health to Liverpool City Council and Co-chair of Liverpool’s Food Insecurity Task Force; Kevin Peacock, trustee of Feeding Liverpool and CEO for St Andrew’s Community Network; Emma Revie, CEO for Trussell Trust; Ian Byrne MP for Liverpool West Derby and co-founder of Fans Supporting Foodbanks; and Dr Naomi Maynard, Feeding Liverpool’s Good Food Plan Programme Director.
