January ‘26

Welcome to another year of celebrating and encouraging food growing, sharing and healthy eating here in Inverclyde! We started the hands-on project development work of ICFN in September 2022, so we are now in our fourth year! It has gone so quickly!

Just to introduce ourselves - we are Alice and Julie who job-share a full-time community food development worker post, working 17.5 hours a week each. ICFN is a newly registered SCIO with board members from Branchton Community Centre, Parklea Branching Out, Belville Community Garden, Broomhill Hub and Gardens, with support and involvement from Inverclyde HSPC, Inverclyde Council CLD, Craigend Resource Centre, The Trust, Inverclyde Libraries and RIG Arts. We engage with 13 Early Learning Centres, communtiy gardens and communtiy groups such as Women’s Aid and the Riverside Club.

So how has our year started?

Despite the cold and rainy weather in January we have been very busy and met with lots of warmth and positivity from our wonderful Inverclyde community!

We have begun preparations for the year ahead -

• organising our first Inverclyde Climate Action network funded pilot project, engaging volunteers to collect and deliver excess supermarket food waste to nursery schools across Inverclyde (click here for more info)

• planning our first ‘Moveable Feast’ of the year at Craigend Resource Centre - free community meal to encourage healthy plant based eating (click here for more info)

• planning Potato Week resources and logistics - 300 kits planned this year!

• making lists of vegetable plugs and seeds and planning volunteer engagement to start seed sowing for all the nursery school gardens - lots of strawberry plants to add this year

• taking delivery of 2 pallets of compost kindly stored at Parklea Branching Out to use in potato week, nursery school and community gardens

Aside from the planning, some of the ‘doing’! -

• We had a meeting about getting involved with growing and cooking at a potential new ‘practice pad’ flat for young adults in the care system

• We made up and distributed 180 soup recipe bags to nursery schools and to give away at community events - it was great to get some assistance from the Parklea Branches Café trainees, who we hope will become more involved with this in future months

• Collected coffee grounds every Thursday from The Alchemist coffee shop for community garden composting

• Met with community chef Angela to discuss up-coming cooking classes and filming of cooking videos for care workers

• Had a community information day at Parklea Branching Out’s Branches café, where we had some great conversations with people about the work we do - lots of encouragement, support and interest in getting involved

• Gave two ‘Ready Steady Cook’ demo sessions at Lyle Gateway’s Carers Well-being event, using some of the free supermarket ‘waste’ food. Great chats with people about using up food waste and especially bread.

• Said a sad farewell to Sally from her position as manager of Belville Communtiy Garden. Sally has done so much for the community and for us at ICFN and we hope she will be more closely involved in the future!

• The usual ‘behind the scenes’ admin, leaflet and recipe design, social media and web updates!

All in all, a busy and productive month to kick off the year!