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Guidance and Resources on setting up and running Community Initiatives

Guidance

The Food Vision website contains guidance to assist the setting up of a new food project. It covers project planning, evaluation, funding, food mapping and partnership working.

Food Vision Guidance on Evidence Gathering

Food Vision has developed project guidance on evidence gathering for community food projects.
This guidance shows how to undertake an assessment of need and guides to a number of sources of statistics, both national and local, which can be used as evidence for projects.
This guidance is in three parts -
1. What evidence do I need?
2. How do I assess need?
3. Where can I find further evidence?
For more information visit the Food Vision website.  

Making Links A Toolkit for Local Food Projects

The toolkit has been written by Sustain to encourage the development of community food initiatives. The toolkit is for projects that are starting up and established projects which want to expand, change direction, improve their evaluation systems or simply find out what other people are doing. A key theme throughout the toolkit is the importance of networking.

Reaching the Parts... Community mapping: Working together to tackle social exclusion and food poverty

This report illustrates the process and funding of using community mapping and participatory appraisal methods to enable local people to analyse their food economies and work with others to develop sustainable solutions. It concludes with a range of recommendations to help tackle food poverty and increase people’s control over their communities. 

‘How to….A Guide to Community Food Activities’

People often have great ideas about what they would like to do with regards to food in their community, but can struggle to know how to get it started. ‘How to….A Guide to Community Food Activities’, developed by Swansea Food Connections, is a series of guides to growing, buying, cooking and eating, to help people to set up their own community food activities. The guides are easy to use, fun and colourful and provide advice and guidance on a whole range of local food activities including allotments, food co-ops, cookery activities, community cafes and luncheon clubs. The guides are also a rich source of local and national useful contacts.

The guides are the result of a collaborative effort between Swansea Food Connections and various communities and agencies in Swansea.

To download the guides click on: 

• Introduction
• Growing
• Buying 
• Cooking 
• Eating
• Easy Read Guide.

Putting food access on the radar

The National Consumer Councils food access radar can be used as a routine tool for identifying communities experiencing food access difficulties and to prioritise resources to the areas with the highest risk. 

City University Food Mapping Toolkit

This toolkit is a guide to assist in mapping a chosen area to discover and show its provision of healthy food. It was developed following research undertaken in 2006 that studied access to food in the London Borough of Hackney. 

Community Food and Health Scotland A Taste for Independence Guide

This guide explores the experiences of 21 organisations throughout Scotland who work with a range of vulnerable groups using food activities. These groups used food activities such as cooking, food shopping and budgeting to help people develop their independent living skills. As well as learning from the their work and discussing issues such as deciding what to cook or how to get people involved, there are also ten case studies. 

Community Food and Health Scotland Fruitful Participation Publication

Fruitful Participation focuses on involving the community in food and health issues. For the past four years, Community Food and Health (Scotland), formerly known as the Scottish Community Diet Project, has organised an annual five-day residential course for those working around food and health who wish to learn more about participatory ways of engaging with people. This report outlines how those who attended the course had used participatory appraisal approaches and methods in planning, evaluating and changing food and health work. ‘Fruitful Participation’ outlines the basic principles of participation and how participation in decision-making has developed. It highlights experiences of using participatory methods and approaches in work and community lives.

Lightening the Load Toolkit

A new online 'toolkit' to help local communities, councils and health bodies provide the services and support that overweight and obese people really need has been published jointly by the National Heart Forum and Faculty of Public Health. The toolkit, Lightening the load: tackling overweight and obesity  contains useful statistics, practical initiatives, evidence of effectiveness, checklists, frameworks and examples of good practice and has been updated to incorporate the latest guidance from NICE. It has been fully endorsed by NICE, the Food Standards Agency, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Physicians; and is backed by the Department of Health.

Carmarthenshire Obesity Toolkit  

Carmarthenshire Obesity Toolkit, developed by the Local Public Health Team with partner organisations including LHB, Trust, primary care and voluntary sector and launched in 2006, is helping to ensure that health practitioners from organisations across the county are taking a unified approach to weight management issues.

Riverside Community Market Association (RCMA) Urban Farmers Market Toolkit

The purpose of this Toolkit is to provide a checklist of considerations and practical advice to help local groups or agencies to launch successful farmers’ markets in Welsh towns and city locations and to help ensure that they grow in a sustainable way.

Ceredigion Healthy Communities Toolkit

The Ceredigion Healthy Heart Programme has published a practical guide for community groups who want to help their members lead a healthier lifestyle.

The Ceredigion Healthy Heart Programme was established in 2002 with a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government’s Inequalities in Health Fund. The aim of the Healthy Communities Toolkit is to encourage and support community organisations and groups to promote healthy lifestyles by:
• Clarifying the meaning of health
• Identifying the potential of organisations to influence healthy lifestyles
• Identifying the benefits of promoting healthy lifestyles to both organisations and members
• Providing information on healthy lifestyle messages
• Providing information about resources, training and support networks bother locally and nationally.

Ceredigion Public Health Team is providing training to community organisations to support this toolkit, which is initially aimed at health visitors and the youth service.

For further information contact Ceredigion Public Health Team on telephone number 01570 424107.

British Heart Foundation Think Fit!

The British Heart Foundation’s Think Fit! guide provides information about workplace activities.

British Heart Foundation Active for Later Life Toolkit

The Active for Later Life Toolkit aims to help those involved in developing physical activity programmes for older people of all ages and abilities.

Walking for Health

The Walking for Health website provides advice with regards setting up a health walk scheme in your local area. There is information about training, insurance, evaluation and promotional materials.

Ramblers

The Ramblers Association is Britain's biggest walking charity. They have been working for over 70 years to promote walking and to improve conditions for everyone who walks in England, Scotland and Wales.

People and participation.net 

People and Participation.net is an informative website that provides practical information for those working to involve people. Individuals and organisations can register for free and can access case studies, a process planner, information about participatory methods, an online library, and use a facility to ask questions directly to the experts.

Green up! 

The Community Development Foundation is a public body sponsored by the Department of Communities and Local Government in England with a partner organisation Community Development Foundation (Wales). Community Development Foundation is the leading source of community development expertise and delivery.

It has published its ‘Green Up!’ Guide which explains how community groups can use local strategies to get their work supported. The guide also explains all the words and vocabulary commonly used by councils, so local groups can clearly understand ‘council speak’.

The ‘Green Up!’ Guide also has tips from community group members who are successfully working with their councils on issues relating to sustainability, climate change, the environment and energy. 

Cooking in the Community

This virtual recipe collection could be used by community food initiatives as a source of nutritionally balanced recipes, to raise awareness of healthy eating and support the community to develop their cooking skills and assist positive dietary change. It showcases the work being undertaken in Wales by community food initiatives and other partners whilst sharing good practice and supporting the success of the initiatives.

This is a ‘dynamic’ document which we hope will continue to grow; we request that you continue to send your healthy eating recipes, so the resource is as useful as possible.

To download the virtual recipe collection click on Cooking in the Community.

We are very grateful to the following initiatives who have contributed recipes: 

• Bedlinog and Trelewis Community Health Menu  
• Carmarthenshire Community Recipe Cards  
• Carmarthenshire Local Public Helath Team 1,2,3 Eat Healthily Resource  
• Ceredigion Healthy Food Programme  
• Food Standards Agency 10 Tasty and Healthy Winter Warmers  
• Funky Fruit and Veg Co-op, Blackwood Primary School  
• Newport Fruit and Veg Co-op Book  
• North East Wales NHS Trust Cardiac Cooking Companion  
• Nutrition and Health Team Confidence to Cook Resource.

Bitesize

The Bitesize newsletter contains timely news from community initiatives, an update on the community food co-operative programme, information about training and conferences, news from elsewhere in the UK, resources, funding and diary dates.

If you know of any other resources that you think are useful and you would like to see included on this webpage please contact the Project Support Team on telephone number 029 20227744.