Manager and Development Officers' Updates, AGM 2021
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Community Carrot’s second AGM on the 20th February. For those who couldn’t make it, here are the updates given by shop managers Jo Gibson & Helen Muir, and the Development Officer Hannah Ewan.
Managers’ Update
A lot has happened since our last AGM: we could never have imagined or anticipated what the world or the Crunchy would look like.
We got through our first five months of being a community shop, finding our feet, planning new ways forward and developing exciting ideas for the future, then on the last weekend of March after a crazy few days, we made the hard decision to shut the doors of the shop. No-one could have imagined we would still be here a year later.
It’s been a hard year...the initial first month of chaos, trying to set up a whole new system that could deal with hundreds of on-line orders. We have had a lot of very long days, feeling like there were not enough hours to get everything done but not wanting to let people down who we knew were relying on us to keep them fed and safe. We had all our regular customers and then many people who had never shopped with us before, ordering lists of products we’ve never even sold!
We had our dried goods suppliers not splitting cases, running out of tomatoes, rice, flour....whatever the latest panic buy was and us juggling week to week with trying to keep up with demand.
The actual logistics and practicalities of turning a small high street shop into a full-on delivery service...we are honestly amazed at what we've all managed to achieve.
We went from making about 50 boxes to over 350 in the first week.
Many people asked when we would be opening, but in truth we have never been shut!!
We have no doubt that it’s because of the support from this community that we are still here, so we would like to send a massive thank you - firstly to all our staff, who have adapted and embraced the constant changes and gone above and beyond to keep us going, this includes the many volunteers who have offered to help, either in the shop, delivering and picking up supplies, often at very short notice. We could simply not have managed without you.
Secondly we would like to thank all our amazing local suppliers, at times like these we are proof of how valuable and essential a sustainable community is.
We receive fresh produce grown on our local farms and community gardens and as well as vegetables and fruit. There are eggs, oils, chocolate, honey, diary products, local bakeries, cheese suppliers and soap makers to name a few...please check out our social media pages where Hannah is doing highlights of all these brilliant producers on our door step.
(We realised what we had when the Suma suppliers started asking US if we could sell THEM flour...we had our own Mungowells mill on our doorstep...for which many bread makers will be eternally grateful!)
And finally we would like to thank you, our community, for supporting us in so many ways: whether it’s standing in the rain waiting to be served from the door, bringing us hot soup or cake on the very long days, volunteering, ordering, showing patience and helping us keep everyone safe. We miss the faces and the Crunchy banter but knowing everyone is behind us has really kept us going.
Who knows what the next few months will bring but we will continue to follow the gov guidelines, prioritising the needs and safety of our customers and staff.
And as we can never go back we hope to keep adapting and moving forward…
Crunchy Managers Helen & Jo
Development Officer’s Update
Development Officer’s Report 2021, and Plans
What is the Development Officer’s role?
Communications: To raise the profile of the Community Carrot, support engagement with, and provide information to its membership and the wider community through managing and maintaining communications relating to the Community Carrot.
Community engagement: To create and strengthen links between the Community Carrot and the Dunbar community, enabling people to make the most of the services the shop offers, and for the shop to make the most of opportunities to buy and sell locally.
Partnerships: In conjunction with the Management Board and staff, develop partnerships with local agencies, schools, businesses, voluntary and community groups around shared aims, such as transport, sustainability and environment.
CBS support: To provide day to day support to the Board of the Community Carrot and the shop manager covering the work above.
Community food and sustainability projects, and fundraising.
Schools and Cooking Skills
A year ago almost exactly, I ran a two-day course at West Barns Primary School for 20 P5 and 6s as part of the Food Technology learning. The kids made a menu of macauli cheese (macaroni & roast cauliflower cheese), rainbow coleslaw and no-bake 'carrot cake' bites. We used the classes to discuss topics covered in class: food journeys, packaging, allergens, food groups, food safety and how we can reduce food waste - we whizzed leftover bread into a breadcrumb topping for the macauli cheese and collected all our scraps for compost. Almost all the ingredients came from the CC, and included East Lothian milk, flour and vegetables.
I have missed running my KidsFoodJourney courses: instead I edited up and published lesson plans to our blog, sharing them with schools and Active Schools East Lothian. These have been viewed over two hundred times.
Crunchy Cook bags: these are meal kit bags that come with a step-by-step how-to-make video. Customers can donate towards a half-price community bag: we then give vouchers for these to our community partners to distribute. I’ve handed out 32 vouchers so far: a huge thank you to our generous customers for donating so many bags!
Seasonal Spotlight recipes have been posted to our blog and shared throughout the year on our social media, to provide inspiration for using local, seasonal produce.
Sunny Soups
This food waste programme is a partnership project between the CC, The Ridge and Dunbar Parish Church, and continued throughout the pandemic using surplus ingredients to make nutritious food, which Dunbar Basics Food Bank volunteers have been delivering to vulnerable folk locally. In the last session of 2020 we hit 7000 portions of food made since the Sunny Soups programme began. We have developed relationships with local growers for surplus produce year-round, and have benefitted from £700 in funding from Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership, mainly to pay for ingredients.
Throughout the pandemic, we have also been delighted to work with the Bleachingfield Community Centre and Home-Start to make and deliver 440 hot meal portions plus home baking.
We also ran an informal ‘No Apple Left Behind’ project to try and make the most of the seasonal apple bounty in September and October 2020. We collected apples from local gardens and orchards, sorted them and delivered 90kg of the good ones to Dunbar Primary School, before cooking up big batches of chutney and apple jelly with the imperfect fruit.
Sustainability
Cutting our deliveries emissions: we secured a £10,000 interest-free loan from the Energy Savings Trust to finance the purchase of the ‘Electric Carrot’ van, and a grant of over £6,000 to buy the ‘Cargo Carrot’, an e-cargo bike which is under order. We also received grant funding to help with the van’s insurance (thanks to Tim Greene) and signage.
Sunny Soups saved around 944kg surplus food from being wasted in 2020.
We have secured a grant, and placed an order for, 12 refillery dispensers to cut our single-use plastic waste.
Partners Old & New
Without the support of The Ridge, Dunbar Basics Food Bank, the Bleachingfield Community Centre, Dunbar Parish Church, Sustaining Dunbar, our schools, local volunteers and others, we couldn't run our programmes.
When the pandemic hit, these community connections became even more close-knit. We were in regular contact with our town's crisis response team, and worked closely with local organisations to offer effective support. Out of this partnership working grew the Local Good Food Alliance, coordinated by Sustaining Dunbar and funded by Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership. We are now one of 20 member organisations of this group.
Funding and Support Thanks
Sunny Soups has received funding from:
· Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership
· The Ridge, who cover three hours of my time each week
· We receive valuable support from project partner Dunbar Parish Church: since 2018 we have been granted the generous use of the church hall and kitchen for free
· The Scottish Government’s Covid-19 Supporting Communities Fund (thank you to Sustaining Dunbar for securing this grant)
· Vegware have sent us a free monthly supply of compostable soups pots since 2018, slashing our single-use plastic waste.
Our series of Belhaven Community Garden cook-outs are funded by Dunbar & East Linton Area Partnership, and organised by Sustaining Dunbar.
To part-fund the buying of our electric van we received a grant from SpareWheels. CoMoUK provided funding to cover the cost of branding it up (a work in progress), with generous pro bono design work from Kate George Design.
The e-cargo bike and refillery dispensers were funded by the Scottish Government’s Community Climate Asset Fund (CCAF).
Plans
A funding application has been submitted for a further 3 years’ funding of the Development Officer role.
We have five further family cook-outs at Belhaven Community Garden planned.
When restrictions allow:
Cooking For Life: we will be running a series of face-to-face adult cooking classes in partnership with The Ridge. Thank you to Amanda Doig & Frances Allen for planning and fundraising for this great project, it will be a pleasure to be part of it.
Sunny’s Kitchen: we plan to re-launch this community café, in partnership with several local organisations. Like Sunny Soups we will use surplus food to make free nutritious meals.
We will head back into Dunbar Primary School for another course of KidsFoodJourney workshops, but these are hard to socially distance – they’re designed around food sharing – so will need a bit of thought and a safer viral environment.
Development Officer Hannah Ewan