World Food Day 2024: Highlighting the work of our Food Justice Services

We particularly want to celebrate the community food partners that work with us across the borough to give residents the opportunity to get involved in cookery, food growing, and providing vital food aid for people struggling to afford meals.

Simone Riddle, Food Justice Programme Manager at Lewisham Local, said, “World Food Day focuses on the rights to food for a better life and better future. Lewisham’s Food Justice Action Plan sets out a series of actions and priorities to help us do this and our recent Silver Sustainable Food Places award recognises the progress we’ve made already.

“But there’s still a long way to go! We’re taking steps for Lewisham to become a Right to Food borough and will continue our work alongside community partners to achieve our vision that all residents have access to food that is nutritious, affordable, culturally appropriate and sustainable all year round.”

You can find a list of free and low-cost food provision, community garden and growing opportunities and a directory of good food businesses in Lewisham on Good Food Lewisham’s website.

In April 2023, Lewisham Council launched its Food Justice Action Plan to tackle food injustice in the borough. We also set up a Lewisham Food Justice Alliance to support delivery of the plan working with voluntary sector and health partners.

Recent activities include:

Continued funding for the Community Food Justice Grants programme which has enabled 19 community food projects to meet increased demand during the cost-of-living crisis. The programme encourages food aid providers to offer culturally appropriate food and was recently featured in an Institute of Health Equity report looking at health inequalities and racism in London.

Community engagement and campaigning to encourage the uptake of Heathy Start – a national government scheme that provides lower income families with young children with money to be spent on healthy foods.

Updating the Worrying About Money? leaflet and distributing to 35 GP surgeries, and offering training for volunteers and frontline workers to help direct people to financial advice and support services

Updating the free and low-cost food directory and distributing paper copies to older residents through the Positive Ageing Council Magazine.

Our food justice work contributed to Lewisham recently receiving a Sustainable Food Places Silver Award, just one of two boroughs to have received an award.

Watch the video of our celebration event.

You can find more updates, links to food support resources and ways you can support this work on our Food Justice Action Plan webpage.