Brixton People's Kitchen

It has been a delight to visit one of Be Enriched’s most active projects, Brixton People’s Kitchen. This project is created by a group of enthusiastic volunteers to provide local community with decent hot meals made from food that would otherwise go the bin. During the site visit, they were hosting a Christmas feast for the local community. We had the pleasure to meet the project leader, Kemi and able to participate their event on site. She was very friendly and we had a nice conversation about the daily operation of the organisation and the effort they put into holding these events. This project runs every Friday for the past 8 months, with 20 volunteers helping regularly. It mainly supported the citizens by serving them 4-5 course hot meals. The meal served is made from discharged food resourced from retail supplier Sainburys and local food markets. With their persistent effort, they are able to build a comfortable corner for those lonely locals to socialise while enjoy delicious hot food.

They kindly offered us hot soup and bread, we got the chance to sit down and engaged with the beneficials. We opened christmas crackers and shared the jokes with each other. The beneficials seemed to know Kemi very well and spoked highly of their organisation, we can see the good connection they have build within the community. Through our interaction with the volunteers, we felt that they were really enjoying this experience. It was an opportunity for them to take a day out of their work and at the same time give something back to the community.

This project is very tailored to the local community, we believe that it is exactly the spirit that we need in order to build a better society. We are happy to be engaged with Be Enriched and expecting more to come in the future years.

Its been 8 months since we took over BPK and its been a sharp learning curve and wild and exciting ride.

We have: worked with teenagers at two local festivals providing free vegetarian food to local people priced out of the other food at these events, delivered a month of cooking workshops to children and parents in a park, supported 150 cyclists on thier way to Paris Climate change conference; worked with Borough market to educate local people and raise funds for our cause; moved location to a derilict community estate to reach more people; and of course served a 4-5 course hot meal to many many local people in the Lambeth area, around 30 people a sitting.

Our mission to save good food from the bin has accelerated with us serving 9 meals in Dec and this being every weekend and sometimes on the same day. We are lucky to have a great team of part-time workers and volunteers to help us in the cause.

We hope that people will help us continue our work through supporting us so that we can pay for the bits and bobs we need like kitchen space and aprons to contiue saving good grub