Who We Are
Aim
Newcastle Community Food Initiative (CFI) aims to improve access to affordable healthy food for people in Newcastle. We believe this can be achieved by addressing the issues of physical access, affordability, access to knowledge and skills and sustaining the local food economy.
Objectives
- Facilitate links between community food initiatives to ensure joint working.
- Provide support, advice, information and resources for community groups who wish to set-up or develop food initiatives.
- Represent community food initiatives and advocate a community development approach within any food related strategies and policies (e.g. Eat Well Newcastle Group and Newcastle Obesity Group).
- Promote the work of the initiative locally, regionally and nationally via a range of media.
The role of the CFI is to facilitate links between local food activities, supporting a co-ordinated citywide approach to tackling food issues. Provide access to resources in terms of funding, skills, information, access to training. Support the development of local food activities from food grants to start the activities to support on evaluation and demonstrating impact.
The food grants are administered by working closely with health and community workers to promote well informed food choices at grass-roots level. The practical work we support is aimed at low-income groups, and our strategic direction links directly with the Government’s health inequalities agenda.
The Community Food Initiative holds a directory of local food activities in Newcastle - please contact if you would like more information about the range of food activities happening in the city.
Activities can be categorised as folllows:
- healthy eating
- cooking skills (cooking for one, lifeskills development)
- food provision (breakfast clubs, community cafes, luncheon clubs)
- food production (food growing, allotments)
- food access (fruit & veg stalls, food co-ops, food delivery scheme, food distributrion, food bags)
- food waste and
- food hygiene/safety
Newcastle Healthy City
The Newcastle Community Food Initiative is managed by Newcastle Healthy City.
Newcastle Healthy City is an independent non-governmental organisation, which aims to:
- promote the health of citizens of Newcastle upon Tyne;
- reduce the inequalities in health between communities within the city.
Newcastle Healthy City is affiliated to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and since December 1998 it has been an official member of the International WHO Healthy City Network (WHO European Healthy Cities).
Newcastle Healthy City hosts several projects encouraging partnership working to address health inequalities in Newcastle.
