Last week some of our team visited the Rethink Food Academy – an amazing educational hub in Leeds raising awareness of food waste and its impact on UK poverty.
As a bunch of food marketers, we thought it was important our team learned about the impact organisations like Rethink Food can have.
Starting out as teachers in deprived areas of Leeds, Kevin and Nathan regularly witnessed the impact hunger has on children’s well-being and education. So they made a pledge to remove it as a barrier.
Now working with over 100 schools annually, Rethink Food saves supermarket food from going to waste on a weekly basis, and delivers it to partnering schools in a bid to help fight food poverty.
But as former educators, the Rethink Food team knows that long-term solutions require learning as well as action!
Kevin and Nathan took our team through their programme and shared with us how their facilities have become an easily accessible base for children and teachers, to better understand current food issues, giving them knowledge of food industries, wastage, sustainability and food security.
The aim is to provide a self-sufficient structure for schools, with children even being asked to create their own social enterprise – complete with brand, slogan and logo! This enterprise then eventually becomes the platform through which Rethink Food’s waste food is distributed as well as the school’s own hub of education and action.
And as soon as we heard the words brand, slogan and logo, we wanted a go ourselves!
To give us a better idea of how it all worked, they challenged us to split into groups and create our own social enterprises, giving us a chance to think about the issues they’d educated us on, and how we might solve them.
And 30 minutes later, we were embroiled in a competitive pitch-off, with Rethink Food crowning Mike, Andy and Peg’s informative food enterprise ‘I-tab’ the winner.
Thanks Kevin and Nathan for an incredibly humbling and informative day, as well as a chance to dust off our presentation chops!