So next up we have, um, Elena Vacca from Your Local Pantry, which Your Local Pantry is an network of membership food shops across the UK, which supports food, access, choice and independence. Hello. And so my name is Elena Vacca and the Food Projects and Your Local Pantry Coordinator at Stockpot Homes Group. And I work majority for Stockpot Homes and in Stockport, but also work kind of nationwide with church action on poverty and to roll out pantries in the North West and Leeds. So, like kind of the North West slash to the right a little bit. And as you can see so, Your Local Pantry scheme is essentially a shop. So from the pictures and you can see it, it's quite light lit shop where you walk in and like, everything is kind of organised well so that you feel like it's a dignified food shop. My kind of approach on this, um, is kind of around, obviously a sustainable food model and how we kind of fight like tackle food waste, but also fight food poverty as well. What is Your Local Pantry? And it is a network of volunteer ran affordable food stores across the UK. Not just in Stockport. Stockport is where it started and we have five now here and across the UK, including Northern Ireland. We have 75 that have just opened, and it is essentially a membership scheme. So it's open to all. There's no income criteria needed, which is different to food providers. So we don't ask for a referral scheme. We don't ask for proof of statement or benefit letters or anything like that. It's if you reach out to us, we kind of will support you. Members pay a small weekly fee of 10 items for £3.50 and that average is about £20 that you take home. And we aim to help members save money on their grocery bills or on their school uniform or on their rent or energy bills, Of course, so we also provide lots of good quality, fresh and chilled produce, and that is supplied mainly by Fair Share, which is a huge food redistribution charity and across the UK and in Greater Manchester. We last year saved 50 tonnes of food from going to landfill, so that's pretty impressive and we also have about 15 to 20 supermarkets that we collect from a week in our lovely little drives in our pantry van and what you saw on the first slide, if anybody wants to drive it, please let us know, yes, so the pantry is essentially about offering like choice and dignity, whilst also tackling that social isolation and food waste as well. Again, all of our stores are volunteer led. So those opportunities for volunteers to become employed or they are just doing it because they want to kind of come outside of their homes after covid. So we're tackling that social isolation through offering volunteer opportunities, and they're often members. So my Pantry Operations Officer, she was a member of the local community and still is in Brinnington, and she volunteered for four years, and now she's being paid full time employment by Stockport Homes Group for four years. So she is the perfect model for you know opportunities for volunteers and pantries and as well as tackling the food waste element, the social isolation, we signpost to other services such as money advice, energy, credit union and owls, which is ongoing and local support group for women and a variety of other groups as well. It started back in 2013. So next year is the 10th year, so and yes, it's basically a sustainable model, as you can tell and we've opened for four more across Stockport since then. They're kind of originally set up in response to welfare reform. So we thought it was the best thing for the local community for food resource, financial support, dignity and choice and also employment support. And we partnered with our franchise partner Church Action on Poverty to roll out pantries across the UK and this has developed and just ballooned. And we are on the target for 200 pantries across the UK by March 2024 and again it's a growing network. So as you can see on the map like there's a range of different pantries from Scotland, Northern Ireland to Wales and quite a lot in London, latest kind in Portsmouth, working on behalf like with their council as well, and so we support 81,000 families and people and then yeah, 10,000 families are supported as well across the network. In Stockport we support around 1,000 individual people. So we have around 200 people that actually come to the pantries, but their household reach is 1,000. So it's quite a lot. A lot of people that were getting too. And we ran a like Social Impact report in 2021. And around 98% of people said that food tackling food waste is really important to them, which is massive, and 95% said and that they've improved their house hold finances. Um, 10% would volunteer at the pantries, so you can see that there is quite a lot of benefits to become a pantry member as well and the typical food basket is valued at £20. So that saves the average household around £780 to £840 a year just on food. By coming to the pantries, we've kind of done a lot of like past projects, helping and working hard with the council with the Holiday and Activity Programme created 2,000 ingredients bags. As you can see, it was just a sea of bags. It was quite quite daunting for yeah, we got there and we help with packed lunches so they are free to support families. So when they come to the pantry, they also get a free packed lunch. We work with Cracking Good Food. Who are an organisation that work in Greater Manchester, and they have kind of launched pantry pods. So alongside the pantry opening times. And we have a pop up gazebo where they cook with ingredients that pantry members might not like, such as kidney, beans, lentils, all the good stuff, Really. So yes, so they you know, a lot of people have said, Oh, I wouldn't make that at home. I don't really like that, But I've tried with, you know, spaghetti lentil Bolognese. So it's quite quite good to see that impact. And we've ran From Pantry to Plate . So held cooking sessions for over 55's to develop their cooking skills from pantry ingredients, that would otherwise would have gone to waste, on a Friday afternoon when the pantry shuts. That's when we held the cooking sessions, because all that food would not last kind of over the weekend, with they're being short dated. We supported Brinnington Big Local with their Cooking Up a Storm Project, so we provided the food and we're working alongside them as Well, um, and they kind of helped the community cook, and we're supported the Youth Engagement Team at Stockport Homes Group as well. That's kind of a wide range of things that we've done, things that we're doing. So we're currently bidding for an electric refrigerated van, it's quite contradictory in that whole term to electric and refrigeration, but we really, really want one, um, as well with the with the emission costs and what not, we have put in a bid for community garden at the back of one of our pantries to increase that biodiversity, grow pantry ingredients and be self sufficient if we make enough and then offer that mental health support and have the community members and volunteers have their key to come to the pantry. We're also looking at making part of the pantry plastic free. So and I'm very aware that we can't say the whole pantry is plastic free because I don't want to turn away food that is come from Fair Share and say, Well, that single use plastic that's like, I don't want that kind of thing when there's people that need food, but we are going to try and make kind of more sustainable model of one of our pantries in Woodley. And then we're looking at doing some more cooking projects across the pantries. So using that pantry ingredients again, that wouldn't necessarily be taken just a little simple thing. So along with what Chris was saying around like volunteering days and team days, we have had quite a few companies, come and work, volunteer for us. So they deep clean pantries, which does not sound that enthusiastic, is that nice? But yeah, it helps us a lot, so you know that that's kind of what they did. Obviously there's lots of volunteering support 'A Day at the Pantry' and and then kind of food donations that we're always looking for because the food market is and food supply chain is, uh, kind of like, dwindling and going bad. But yeah, so that's kind of the ways you can support us if you wanted to. And then if you want to find out more, there is our Social Impact Report on Dignity, Choice and Hope, and please feel feel free to visit the website as well. But I think that's everything. I hope you understood my scouse accent.