Food Power

The goal is to transform the way that people experiencing food poverty access support so they can create long-term, sustainable lives that are free from hunger.

Food Power supports coordinated approaches to tackling food poverty in over 50 areas across the UK, tailored to the particular locality and unique policy contexts across the four nations. The four-year programme running from 2017-2021 is funded by The National Lottery Community Fund and is led by Sustain and Church Action on Poverty.

Food Power is a legacy of our Beyond the Food Bank campaign (2015-2016) in which we partnered with a few SFP Network members to trial a systems approach to food poverty that focused on tackling the root causes, reversing the demand for emergency food assistance, providing a publicly-funded safety net for the most vulnerable and ensuring that low-income households can afford and access good food. The campaign called on national and local government to take action to reduce food poverty, rather than relying on charity-based responses.

Some of the achievements of the Beyond the Food Bank campaign included:

• Making a significant contribution to the second Feeding Britain report (2015)
• Establishing the UK Food Poverty Alliance with the majority of national organisations working to tackle food poverty.
• Serving as a conduit between local and national efforts to address food poverty, including engagement with national policymakers on:
  • Collecting evidence of the impact of welfare reform
  • Making the case for the introduction of a sugary drinks tax
  • Establishing a standardised measure of food poverty.

Resources

• Case studies of action by local food poverty alliances from across the UK
• A webinar series featuring national and local organisations highlighting best practice in this sector 
• Toolkits, briefings, publications and other resources to support local action
• A collection of food poverty action plans and needs assessments that have been published in different areas across the UK
• Food Power’s 11 action areas focusing on the root causes of food poverty 

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