Popular Derry community fridge receives funding boost

Creggan Country Park’s Community Fridge ‘Creggan Connected’ has been awarded £6,000 from Co-op as part of Hubbub’s ‘Food Hub’ funding programme.

The community fridge was officially launched in April 2022, and since then has distributed over one ton of surplus food to local families and in doing so has resulted in a four-ton reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

A Community Fridge is a social space that brings people together to connect, learn new skills and reduce food waste. Surplus food is redistributed via a Community Fridge to local people.  No registration is required, and food is collected and redistributed on the same day.

Visitors can go for a walk, bring along a reusable bag and just take what they want from the fridge and shelves during its opening hours.  Community Fridges help tackle climate change at a local level as food waste can produce large amounts of greenhouse gases.  

The Community Fridge is also a social space. Visitors to the park can relax after their walk, enjoy a free cup of tea, refill their reusable water bottle, and find out what services are available in their area. Children can play with toys and games, read books, solve puzzles, and colour in. The space is also used as a base to deliver free environmental events throughout the year.

Thanks to funding through the Food Hub programme, the Community Fridge will launch a series of free workshops in 2023:- Cooking with less: Local chefs will deliver cooking workshops to show people how to create simple nutritious meals for the family for under £5; Money saving tips: Tips on how to save money by making small changes to help your pocket & the environment; Be an eco-hero: Learn how to be more environmentally friendly at home.

In addition to these workshops, funding will help to create a pop up edible garden where fruit and vegetables are grown on site for people to take home.  

An eco-cookbook will be available to collect from the Community Fridge or download from the website. The booklet will contain lots of useful information on how to create budget saving recipes using basic community fridge ingredients, tips on how to be more environmentally friendly at home, and facts about biodiversity and climate change. 

Funding for the Food Hub programme is all thanks to Hubbub, Co-op, the Rothschild Foundation, and The Starbucks Foundation. The funding aims to support the development of new activities relating to budgeting, surplus food and cooking. 

Karen Healy, Environmental Officer at Creggan Country Park says, “Thanks to this funding boost, we can deliver new activities in our community fridge to help raise awareness on environmental issues, and help support people in these difficult times. Community fridges are more important than ever as they bring people together to reduce loneliness, increase access to learning, and redistribute surplus food to help both people and planet.”

Hubbub says “Community Fridges bring people together to share good food. Across the UK they are reducing social isolation, increasing access to skills, sharing knowledge and repurposing fresh surplus food. We know that many groups want to do even more. The Food Hubs funding in partnership with Co-op, the Starbucks Foundation and the Rothschild Foundation will help groups to develop and deliver additional activities.

For more information on Creggan Country Park’s environment programme, visit www.creggancountrypark.com

For up to date information on opening times & surplus food available visit www.facebook.com/creggan.countrypark18  

To find a community fridge near you, visit https://www.hubbub.org.uk/the-community-fridge