Food for London: Grant for Newham food project set up after 'Oliver Twist-style scenes'

It was when Eric Samuel’s mother was admitted to Newham General Hospital that his eyes were opened to food poverty in the East End.

Until then Eric had led a relatively protected life, growing up in affluent St Albans, studying electronics and working for Marconi Avionics on their Nimrod aircraft and later in exports.

But his mother’s illness and craving for West Indian food — yams, sweet potatoes and plantains — on the day before she died took him into a part of London he’d never seen.

I remember going to Green Street Market in Newham at closing time and seeing desperate people picking up discarded fruit and vegetables from the bins,” said Eric, 57, now a married father of two. “I saw people scavenging. It was like a scene from Oliver Twist.

“It made me want to make food available either free or at affordable prices and so I left my job and set up a project fighting food poverty that took over my life and changed me for ever.”

Eric persuaded Tate & Lyle to give him free use of an unused warehouse next to London City Airport where, in 2003, he set up Community Food Enterprise (CFE), an organisation that provides fresh surplus food to community groups in east London.

In 2006 he was honoured with an MBE for his contribution to the food industry, a social entrepreneur bringing fresh food to poor people at affordable prices.

At the same time on the other side of London, another social entrepreneur, Ian Solomon-Kawall, was also inspired by the death of his mother to set up a project that also tackled food poverty.

Ian, 43, a youth worker, had cared for his bipolar single mother, May, from age 12 for 20 years, but when she died in 2005, leaving him her Merton home with a large orchard, he decided to turn it into a community garden and open it to the public. He named it after his mother, calling it May Project Gardens.

He recalled: “Because of my experience feeling so terribly isolated as a carer, I wanted to ensure that anyone who lived locally and felt marginalised had a nurturing place to go.

“My care moved from my mum to the community and I started to engage local people by offering food-growing and composting workshops.

“The way gardens regenerate gave me the inspiration to see my mum’s death as a new beginning and I set up Grow Cook Eat, a project tackling nutrition among the poor and food poverty.”

May Project Gardens and CFE have been awarded grants from the Evening Standard Dispossessed Fund, just two of 29 payouts announced this week as part of our £358,500 Food for London initiative, backing community projects using surplus produce.

The £12,590 grant to May Project Gardens will be used to deliver community cooking sessions and apple-pressing days for people living on the Pollards Hill estate in Merton.

Ian has recruited two dynamic young directors to develop May Project Gardens — Mona Bani, 30, a King’s College graduate and former Cabinet Office adviser, and Zara Rasool, 26, a graduate from UCL.

Mona said: “Our first ever grant was from Merton council to pilot Grow Cook Eat on the Pollards Hill estate as part of their health and well-being strategy.

Life expectancy drops off a cliff as you head from affluent Wimbledon in the west of the borough to the poor eastern side where people die on average 10 years earlier, and the council want us to be part of the strategy to address that.”

​Zara added: “The Dispossessed Fund grant allows us to expand. We will use the food we grow in our garden and estate allotments as well as surplus fruit and veg donated by Abel & Cole and other local retailers to help people on the Pollards Hill estate.

“The idea is that they cook and eat healthy dishes using fresh ingredients and learn recipes they can easily replicate at home.”

In the case of CFE, the £18,640 grant will fund a new volunteer co-ordinator to re-organise its food collection and redistribution efforts. The CFE has a warehouse, a chiller, four vans and a forklift truck but its capacity is underutilised. It hopes that the new co-ordinator will revitalise the operation and increase its collection and redistribution of surplus food to charities.

Eric said: “In 2008, the heyday of CFE, I had the honour of meeting the Queen when she came to visit Tate & Lyle and we set up a CFE stall.

“At the time, we were operating in 23 schools but we have since lost that funding. This grant from the Dispossessed Fund is a shot in the arm and will allow us to ramp up what we do. It is just what we need to re-energise the group and rebuild our network.”

Community Food Enterprise

What they do: Started in 2003 by Eric Samuel, this charity operates from a warehouse near London City Airport provided free by Tate & Lyle where it deploys vans to redistribute surplus food — mostly apples, pears, potatoes, cabbages and cauliflowers from the gleaning network — to community groups.

Where: Newham

Grant: £18,640 to fund a new volunteer coordinator and two~ paid drivers to re-energise the group and increase their redistribution of surplus food to charities across east London.

May Project Gardens

What they do: Co-founded in 2006 by youth worker Ian Solomon-Kawall, this charity works with youth centres, housing associations and estates to engage them in food-growing opportunities and community cooking sessions.

Where: Merton

Grant: £12,590 to deliver 24 cooking and eating sessions using surplus food for 40 people from Pollards Hill estate, 24 youth sessions and four apple-pressing days.

Loughborough Junction Action Group

What they do: Started in 2008 when a group of local residents came together to do something positive for their community, they now run projects including cycle maintenance, street photography, community planting and a cafe.

Where: Lambeth

Grant: £7,798 to open their community cafe an extra two days a week, using produce grown locally at Loughborough Farm as well as surplus food from local retailers Co-op and Tesco benefiting up to 200 people.

The Family Centre

What they do: The charity, founded in 1997, supports families from deprived communities by offering drop-in sessions, play schemes, a creche, cafe, keep-fit sessions and digital inclusion classes.

Where: Croydon

Grant: £16,616 to deliver 20 healthy eating and cookery workshops using surplus food and to set up and run a social supermarket four times a week for 80 residents in the Fieldway and New Addington wards.

The £358,500 grants programme was funded by Citi banking group, D&D London restaurant group and the Dispossessed Fund.