Food Partnership
The Tower Hamlets Food Partnership aims to create a local food system where everyone in Tower Hamlets enjoys and has access to healthy and sustainable food. We are a collaboration between everyone in Tower Hamlets who has a role to play in local food. From big to small: residents, community organisations, schools, businesses and the council.
We’re part of a successful national framework of food partnerships called Sustainable Food Cities which works to tackle key issues in our local food systems - from the environmental impact, to the social and health and wellbeing. Each looking at them from their unique localised perspective and dealing with them using the means they have available in their setting.
In Tower Hamlets, we believe that food lies at the heart of some of the borough’s greatest problems and that improving our food system will be a vital part of the solution.This is a really exciting opportunity to celebrate so much of the amazing innovative work going on and to tackle so many of the challenges facing Tower Hamlets.
Get involved!
It’s a great time to get involved to shape our work as we are still very new! We were developed by a group of organisations including Tower Hamlets Council in spring 2018, and the Women’s Environment Network became the host in summer 2018.
We are currently at the stage where we are researching and mapping our local food system to better understand local need, activities and opportunities in Tower Hamlets. This will help us to develop our priorities for the working groups next year, and will feed into some of the council’s work on food.
If you would like to be involved and/or added to our mailing list, please email Fran Bernhardt, the Tower Hamlets Food Partnership Coordinator on fran@wen.org.uk
Current projects
The food partnership’s first major project is the ‘Know your food system’ research and scoping exercise to map and better understand local need, activities and opportunities in Tower Hamlets.
There are so many fantastic organisations working to promote access to healthy and sustainable food such as:
The Tower Hamlets Food Growing Network which supports sustainable food growing and links local organisations with people passionate about food.
One Love Community Foundation which is a grassroots network reaching out to local communities to provide knowledge and support to improve health, responsibility and security.
Food Cycle Bow Road which works with volunteers to make free meals for the community from surplus food.
As well as numerous community organisations running cooking classes:
Quaker Social Action’s Bags of Taste
Women’s Environmental Network and Poplar Harca Live Well Courses
