Gleaning in Sandwich on Sunday 18th October

Hello fantastic gleaners of Kent!

There is a gleaning day coming up Sunday 18th October – 10am-5pm (TBC):

We’ve found 20 tonnes of apples and 1 tonne of pears going to waste on a farm near Sandwich, Kent.

The reason the apples are going to waste is that their colour and size is not good enough for the retailers! That's why we need your help to save this lovely fruit from going in the bin.


Next Sunday 18th, 10am-5pm (TBC) we’re inviting volunteers to the massive glean to help harvest those apples and pears and save them from waste, to surprise food poverty charities like FareShare in Kent and London with lovely fresh juicy fuit. You can witness the colossal waste first-hand, and have a great social day out for a fantastic cause.


Please spread the news of our glorious mission to save the pears to your friends and groups, by sharing this email, or here’s a sharable facebook pic and tweet!


To join the big apple-glean, please fill in our sign-up sheet or for more info, please contact kent@feedbackglobal.org

We know this is short notice, but please get in touch ASAP so we have an idea of numbers. Also, please do check whether you can make it, as lots of drop-outs at the last minute can jeopardise the gleaning day going ahead.

Usually travel expenses can be covered for those travelling from Kent – just check with us first (we generally cover up to £12 per gleaner, so a car with 4 people could be reimbursed £48 petrol expenses in total).


If you're receiving this you're already on our gleaning list, but if your friends want to receive emails about future gleaning days, get them to sign up to our gleaning list here.


If you can't join us this time, watch this space – we’ll have lots more gleaning days coming up as harvests come to an end for lots of the wonderful produce here around Kent so keep your eyes peeled for dates and locations where you can join us.

And here's some background about gleaning:
Gleaning is about working with farmers who, for reasons usually beyond their control, have large amounts of healthy, edible food that they cannot harvest and that at risk of going to waste. We step in with our band of volunteers (that's you!) to harvest the food and redistribute it to homelessness and food insecurity causes.

In 2013, we gleaned approximately 48 tonnes of produce, equal to over 200,000 meals, with over 200 volunteers across 18 gleaning days. We launched gleaning hubs in Kent, Cambridgeshire, Sussex, Bristol, London and Manchester, and we hope over the coming year to expand to other regions like Lincolnshire and Scotland, and around Europe! We also achieved extensive media coverage, including Channel 4's River Cottage, the Guardian, BBC Radio 4's Food Programme. You can see some great short videos about us, too - by the Guardian, and Al Jazeera. And we've recently become winners of the BBC Food and Farming Award for the Best Initiative in British Food!

All the best!

Eleonora Falesiedi
Kent Gleaning Co-ordinator

www.feeding5k.org

m: + 44 07496369192

 

We are 2014 BBC Food and Farming Award winners for Best Initiative in British Food.