The Nourish Hub End Of Summer Update

What a summer! We have hosted our first project at the Nourish Hub, which has been a huge success, with over 130 young local residents stepping through our doors, to learn about our food system, nutrition and how to cook great healthy food. We feel more connected to our amazing new space and the surrounding community, and it has been a wonderful experience sharing it with so many local young people and parents alike.

Alongside delivering Summer Clubs, we have been producing hundreds of meals a week, for Hammersmiths own Dance West, The Hurlingham Club and our boroughs elderly residents. These nutritious and delicious meals have been created entirely from surplus food; a massive thank you to UKHarvest's food donors!

As we step into September we pick up the pace and start our soft launch events, finish our website and branding and put the final details on to our official launch in October.

Nourish Summer Clubs

Across the last 5 weeks, we have supported young people to learn new skills, grow, harvest, cook and try new foods, whilst them showing us their creative skills, such as making pea guacamole and artistic vegetable tarts. Feedback has made us realise we are providing something really valuable to the community, feedback like, ‘Thank you all for being so organised, welcoming and so sweet. The sessions helped my daughter to have some really good times and learn about veggies and healthy eating and planting‘. This kind of feedback has only motivated us to push harder on this path. See some of the pictures and videos captured over on our Instagram to see how enjoyable work should be!

Square Mile Farms

One of our early successes has been our partnership with Square Mile Farms, who have installed 3 vertical indoor growing towers which produce a variety of leafy green vegetables and herbs, to be used in the Nourish Cafe and Cookery School. Dish the Urban Farmer kindly delivered the ‘plastic water bottle to plant pot’ workshop at our Summer Clubs, spreading his horticultural wisdom and inspiring young minds to become more waste-conscious! We have watched children turn up as fussy eaters, help harvest plants they had not come across before to eating handfuls of chard, kale and thyme on it's way into the basket. Check out more about our partnership here.

Nourishing meals

Before we hosted the Nourish Summer Clubs at the Hub, our Nourish Café Kitchen was open and preparing freshly made, nutritionally balanced meals for our local friends and partners at Dance West who have been delivering activity-packed dance sessions as part of the Summer In The City programme too.

Meals on wheels

As if that wasn’t enough, we decided to use the access to rescued ingredients to launch our food delivery service, in partnership with Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Our sustainable and health-focused approach to producing food is now being delivered to the doors of a growing number of warm and appreciative socially isolated senior citizens. In doing this we are creating jobs for local people, reducing carbon, traffic, building connections and filling bellies! If you want to get involved please contact us on volunteer@nourishhub.org.uk

Volunteer with us

Are you looking for a fun way to make a difference? We are on our way to doing something really rewarding, fun and invaluable, and we want to share it. We would like you to help us use food as a medium to nourish the mind, body and soul. We have a wide number of activities you can support our amazing community with – starting today! Whether you’re a keen cook, spreadsheet geek, cyclist, gardener, cleaner, coffee maker, or just lovely person with an interest in food and nutrition, then roll your sleeves up, and join us at the Nourish Hub.

You can volunteer in our community kitchen or cookery school - peeling, chopping, frying, mixing, boiling, serving, portioning, packing, and cleaning up. But most of all, you’ll have a lot of fun meeting a network of like-minded people, whilst having many opportunities to learn and exchange!

You don’t need to have any previous experience, you just need to get stuck in! Everyone over the age of 18 is welcome to volunteer. We take care of all the paperwork and processes and make sure everyone has the role that best suits them. To apply, please submit your interest to volunteers@nourishhub.org.uk describing your availability and interest to join us.