community interest company Archives

The Harrogate charity pioneer looking for one last jobRefurbished church aims to meet needs of growing Killinghall community

A community building is set to reopen in Killinghall next weekend after a £248,000 refurbishment.

Killinghall Methodist Church has made the investment to help it meet the needs of the village’s growing community.

As well as providing a more modern space, it has reduced the building’s carbon footprint, as part of the Methodist aim to achieve net zero status.

Rev Ron Hicks from the church said:

“It’s becoming an eco-friendly church building. There’s air source heat pumps, and solar panels on the roof.

“Internally we have reconfigured the worship area, taken bits of the partitioning out and opened it up to be one big place for the community to use.”

The first chapel on the Ripon Road site was built in 1793, and its foundation stone still remains in the present building, which was built as a school in 1937. In 1973 the original chapel was demolished and the school room was refurbished, with an extension built around the same time.

The latest work has seen a new kitchen installed along with new windows, carpets, heating, insulation and a cycle rack. The building has also been redecorated.

Before and after photos inside Killinghall Methodist Church

It has been funded by Methodist Church sources, along with a grant of almost £100,000 from the FCC Communities Foundation, a not-for-profit business that awards grants through the Landfill Communities Fund.

Additional money was provided by the Benefact Trust and the Congregational and General Charitable Trust.

Rev Hicks said:

“Now, we’re into the next phase of the building’s life.

“It’s a really good congregation of all ages, from youngsters through to people in their 30s and 40s, right through to much older.

“Upgrading the facilities now is important because there are people coming in who are new to the village. We want a modern building that suits their needs.”

The church is also set to become home to a new community cafe run by Resurrected Bites.

The food waste organisation will open its third pay-as-you-feel cafe this spring, using food that would otherwise go to landfill to deliver a menu of breakfasts, lunches, cakes and drinks.

Founder Michelle Hayes said:

“We hope it will be the perfect opportunity for people to congregate and get to know other people from Killinghall.

“We are hoping to find someone to run a great toddler group on Thursday mornings as we are particularly concerned about loneliness for stay-at-home parents or carers. The café will also be a nice venue for people working from home to have their lunch and a chat with people.”

Resurrected Bites is seeking a cafe manager for the new venue. The paid role of eight hours a week involves an hour of prep on a Wednesday and seven hours leading the team on Thursdays.

Volunteers are also being recruited to help prepare, serve and clear away in the cafe each week.

For more information, email Heather Memmott at Resurrected Bites.

An official reopening of the church will be held on Saturday, February 4, from 1pm to 3pm, when the community will have the chance to look at the new facilities.

Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal: ‘I shouldn’t need this – but it’s a lifesaver’

This year’s Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal is for Resurrected Bites in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Today, Vicky finds out how a series of life events left one woman unable to afford food.

Please give generously to support local people who are struggling this Christmas. They need your help.

“I feel guilty every time I go to Resurrected Bites. I keep saying I shouldn’t be here. I work full-time for the NHS. But it’s a life-saver.”

Lara Rundle is a single mum to four grown-up children.

For the last three years, she has lived in Burton Leonard, having moved up from the south-east following the death of her father.

It was the first in a string of events that left her struggling to cover all her outgoings – even before she tried to buy food.

“I had lost my dad and he was helping me pay my mortgage. Even a rabbit hutch in the south-east is mad money.

“When he passed, he said to me and my brother that he had left the money to clear our mortgages. We found out after that his partner had accidentally lost the will and she took everything.

“My house was on the point of being repossessed and I had a breakdown.

“I had only been in Harrogate twice in my life and had a midlife crisis and said I was moving to Yorkshire.”

With some savings in the bank and a small, fixed-rate mortgage, Lara had enough money to get by. However, a reaction to the covid vaccination left her leaving hospital treatment and unable to work for some time.

As she recovered, Lara received some devastating news:

“The second of my four children was in a car accident in Sussex. She broke her back in two places.

“Her friend was killed, and another friend was in intensive care.”

Lara spent many months travelling up and down the country to visit her daughter, eating into her dwindling savings.

She began to look into ways to cut her costs and find some money.

“I’ve got this big, flash car that I can’t afford, but because it keeps breaking down, the garage won’t take it back. It’s in negative equity. If it wasn’t for that, I would probably be OK.

“I’ve got equity in the house – I’ve got a very small mortgage, but the building society won’t let me release any equity because they said I don’t earn enough to repay it.”

Lara had been in receipt of some benefits, but that changed when her youngest daughter went away to university. She was given an annual pay rise of £90 a month, which meant she was no longer entitled to the £180 a month she had been receiving in Universal Credit.

At £90 a month worse off than before, she then received a letter saying her council tax was going to increase because the valuations office believed her house should be in a higher band.

Lara simply didn’t know what to do.

Shelves full of products at Resurrected Bites’ community grocery

She was helped by her GP practice, which put her in touch with Resurrected Bites.

She became a customer of the community grocery at Gracious Street in Knaresborough, paying £3 for a shop worth many times that amount. She said:

“When my kids were small, I was on my own with four kids and we did have to use a foodbank.

“Now they’re grown up, I never thought I would be in this situation again.

“I had never heard of Resurrected BItes before.

“You feel you are paying something, so it’s not a hand-out. It’s fresh fruit and vegetables. They’re the kind of things I can’t afford to buy.

“If I go to the supermarket, the only thing I have to buy is cheese and butter, sometimes meat. There’s stuff there I could never have afforded to buy even if I wasn’t in this situation.”

With her daughter well on the road to recovery and the support of Resurrected Bites when she needs it, as well as welcoming neighbours in her new home, Lara feels much more positive about the future.

She said:

“It has made such a massive difference. I know I don’t have to worry.

“If you have an extra fiver you put it on your account so you don’t have to worry about paying next time.

“I just can’t thank them enough. They’re angels. The service is a life-saver.”

Nobody in the Harrogate district should go hungry this Christmas.

It costs £300 to run the community grocery for one day. Please help to keep it open for everyone who relies on it.

Click here to contribute now.

Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal: Making hearty meals from food waste

Like many people, Ian Booth’s job changed significantly when the covid pandemic began.

He had spent the previous year as manager of Resurrected Bites’ pay-as-you-feel café at St Mark’s Church.

In early 2020, along with the community interest company’s founder, Michelle Hayes, he had opened a new café at Gracious Street Methodist Church in Knaresborough and was in the process of launching another, at West Park United Reformed Church in Harrogate.

That March, they found themselves intercepting four tons of food waste each week and distributing it to people who were struggling.

Volunteers collected surplus food from supermarkets five days a week instead of two, and hospitality businesses forced to close their doors emptied their kitchens into vans and car boots.

Ian said:

“I wasn’t really anything like aware of the food poverty issue in the Harrogate area – not the scale of it. I realised people were going to be struggling, but not to this extent.

“As we were anticipating all this food waste, my immediate thought was to provide food to people who were struggling. Michelle had the same idea.

“We tapped into a huge food poverty issue in the area. We didn’t want to abandon that when the pandemic ended.

“That’s when we thought about adopting the community grocery model.”

Meanwhile, in 2021, Ian was back in the kitchen at the cafés, drawing on skills he had developed while living and working as a pastor at a church in France with his family.

“I’ve always enjoyed cooking – I do lots of it and in big quantities. We have five kids and we did so many church events.

“Because we’ve got a large family and always lived on a fairly low income, it’s a case of ‘see what’s cheap and make the most of it’.”

That experience is ideally suited to the demands of running the cafés, which take their ingredients from the Resurrected Bites warehouse.

Anything that can’t be sold in the community groceries will find its way onto the menus: catering packs of rice or chopped tomatoes, bacon, couscous, chickpeas, beef, potatoes, carrots… In late summer, a huge volume of apples arrived each week as people found their trees were producing more than they could use at home.

Ian said:

“I enjoy the creative bit – it can be very challenging. My mind starts whirring instantly about menus.

“We try and produce five main courses, a soup, a couple of desserts.”

When I visit Gracious Street Methodist Church one Friday lunchtime, roast beef and vegetables are on the menu.

It is delicious: hearty and warming on a cold day, a reminder of classic home cooking. Ian has exacting standards, though, and is constrained by what has arrived at the warehouse:

“We would normally never do roast beef without Yorkshire puddings, but we didn’t have any eggs.”

The tables are packed. Single people, pairs of friends, young families – they all share the space and make cheerful conversation as they order and eat.

The Gracious Street café is the busier of the two, I’m told, no doubt because it runs on the same day the community grocery is open in another room at the church. Knaresborough itself is a popular place to be on a Friday morning and some of the customers tell me they call in to the café after doing their shopping.

The cafés are not just aimed at people on tight budgets who might struggle to afford to eat out elsewhere, though.

Ian said:

“Often, people don’t come because they think it’s just for people who are struggling. We’re absolutely dependent on people who can afford to give generously.

“At the same time, it’s great when people come who can’t afford to, knowing that someone who is struggling has had a good hot meal.”

Many benefits

Ian is a passionate environmentalist – one of the reasons for his involvement in a project that aims to cut food waste.

He has been surprised by the many other benefits people get from Resurrected Bites. Not only does it support people to feed themselves and their families with dignity by paying for their shops, it also helps people who might have been struggling in other ways.

“Quite a number of people have come in and volunteered who have said, ‘this has been so good for my mental health’. It’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t have thought of.

“We had one guy who was helping with cooking. He was a good cook. He has gone on to work for a local charity, cooking for them. It’s brilliant.

“They asked me for a reference for him and I was able to say I couldn’t think of anybody better suited to this job. He has got that kind of compassionate heart.

“It’s great to have that experience and go on to use it in such a positive way.”

Resurrected Bites has close ties to local charities and organisations. There isn’t much that can’t be used in its cafes or community groceries, but when there is, it’s redirected to someone who can make use of it.

Volunteers helped to reopen Resurrected Bites’ cafes after covid

Approaching retirement in a couple of years, Ian is looking to cut down his hours at the cafes over the coming months.

At the same time, a new café is being planned in Killinghall. It means new volunteers and a new café manager will be needed – and Ian can only reflect on what a privilege it will be for those involved:

“I always think one of the best things about my job is the people I work with.

“We’re totally reliant on volunteers. The sort of people that volunteer are nice people, kind and caring, thinking of others.

“I just feel so blessed to have so many nice people to work with.”

Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal: Ukrainian refugees relying on Resurrected Bites for food in Knaresborough

This year’s Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal is for Resurrected Bites in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Today, Vicky meets a Ukrainian family who have relied on its support this year. Please give generously to support local people who are struggling this Christmas. They need your help.

“We thought we would come here for a year, then we would go back to Ukraine. Now… I don’t know.”

Andre and Irina left their home near Kyiv after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They arrived in Knaresborough with their two daughters – then aged three and 11 months – in late May.

With few possessions and no income they were directed towards Resurrected Bites. Andre said:

“Before September, I was looking for work. In September I started a course at Harrogate College in electrical engineering.

“I have a university degree in electrical engineering. I had a good job. UK wiring systems are different, so the course means I will be able to get a job here.”

Both he and Irina, who has been a full-time mum since their children were born, have also been learning English as a second language.

Their eldest daughter, now four, is enrolled in a local pre-school and is becoming more settled every day. Her younger sister will, hopefully, sign up after she turns two next year.

The family have been living in rooms at a local pub, arranged through the government’s Ukraine programme, but this was only for six months. They have recently been forced to find a new home in order to continue receiving support from the programme for the next six months.

He said:

“After this time, we will have to pay rent. I have no job and I will only be able to find a job after my course ends in July.

“How will I pay for our accommodation until then?”

Not only have the family been supported by Resurrected Bites, they have also become part of the community at Gracious Street Methodist Church, practising their Christian faith and getting to know others in the area.

Andre has begun volunteering in the community grocery on his day off college, giving back support to the organisation that has helped his family.

They are permitted to stay here for three years and to find jobs, but those three years don’t count towards any future citizenship application. That would require a further five years in the UK.

The future remains uncertain for them in so many ways. Returning to Ukraine would not be simple either: the population of the capital city is less than half what it used to be and Andre said it took many years to rebuild after the devastation of the Second World War.

Some of Andre’s family members are now living elsewhere in the UK, but Irina’s parents are still in Ukraine. She said:

“They are OK, but very afraid. It’s a very hard life for them.”

The family still see Ukraine as their home, but at the moment it would be impossible to return. Andre added:

“There’s no electricity – only for a few hours a day. Russian forces destroyed the electricity station. There’s no water.

“It’s winter in Ukraine and it’s freezing. I don’t know how many people will die, because the freeze is very dangerous.”

They are just one example of the Ukrainian refugees living in the Harrogate district who are being supported by Resurrected Bites.

The organisation is a lifeline to people who have fled the war and are trying to build a new life for themselves in the Harrogate district.

Like Andre, many are retraining and hoping to find employment – but the ticking clock of the government’s year-long support hangs over them all.

In the meantime, organisations like Resurrected Bites are ensuring none of them go without food this winter.

Nobody in the Harrogate district should go hungry this Christmas.

It costs £300 to run the community grocery for one day. Please help to keep it open for everyone who relies on it.

Click here to contribute now. Thank you.

Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal 2022: Help ensure nobody goes hungry this Christmas

This year’s Stray Ferret Christmas Appeal is for Resurrected Bites in Harrogate and Knaresborough. Please read Vicky’s story about the charity below and give generously to support local people who are struggling this Christmas. They need your help.

This Christmas, there are local people – colleagues, neighbours, friends – young, elderly and working age people — who will not be able to put food on their tables.

There is help at hand from local organisation Resurrected Bites – but it’s facing a tough time too.

Just weeks ago, it warned it faced an uncertain future: its own costs are rising, the amount being donated had dropped, and more and more people are looking for help.

That’s why, from now until Christmas, the Stray Ferret is calling on everyone to give their support to this vital local organisation to help us secure its future.

All donations go directly to Resurrected Bites and will be generously match-funded by Harrogate firm Techbuyer, up to the value of £5,000.

Over the next four weeks, I’ll bring you stories that show just how important the work of Resurrected Bites is. Please read them, share them, and donate whatever you can.

The story of Resurrected Bites

“Harrogate is a really difficult place to be poor.

“There’s this perception that it’s all rosy, but that’s not the case for a lot of people.”

It was this realisation that prompted Michelle Hayes to do something to make a difference across the Harrogate district.

The former research scientist founded a food waste café as part of her role as mission and outreach worker, employed by St Mark’s Church but covering the whole of Harrogate.

Resurrected Bites began life in 2018 in the foyer of the church on Leeds Road, using food from supermarkets and some local hospitality businesses which would otherwise be thrown away. There was nothing wrong with the food, other than perhaps passing its ‘best before’ guidance date – but it would have ended up in a bin.

She was inspired by the Real Junk Food Project in Leeds, founded by Adam Smith. Not only was it reducing food waste, it was making a significant difference to people. Michelle said:

“It literally saved a guy’s life. He had lost his job and had no money, and he couldn’t see a way forward. He was contemplating ending his own life.

“He walked past the café, went in and got a meal, and ended up becoming a volunteer. It saved his life.”

The Harrogate café proved to be a success. Not only did it reduce food waste across the Harrogate area, it provided hot meals on a pay-as-you-feel basis to local people, and offered an opportunity to soclialise too.

Michelle turned it into a community interest company, meaning it is run for the benefit of the community and its income is used to continue this work.

Expansion

In 2020, Resurrected Bites began to expand, with a second café at Gracious Street Methodist Church in Knaresborough launching in January, followed by a third at West Park United Reformed Church, in early March.

Then, of course, everything changed.

The arrival of covid meant the cafes all had to close immediately, but Michelle and the small team of volunteers knew there was still a role for them. They began distributing food parcels to the many local people who suddenly found themselves out of work and short on money.

Just a fraction of the food donated to Resurrected Bites every week during covid lockdowns

At the height of covid, they were intercepting three tonnes of food waste every week and ensuring it reached people who would otherwise not have enough to eat.

Michelle said:

“I realised the scale of food poverty in the area. It was shocking.

“I knew then that once we stopped doing the deliveries, we still had to have a mechanism to get things to people who really needed it.”

Community groceries

While restrictions were still in place, Michelle began working on the next stage of the project: community groceries.

Using the same principle as the cafés of taking food that was still perfectly edible but would not be sold commercially, they were designed to help households who could not afford enough food.

The community groceries allow people to choose their own food from the shelves. Members pay a small fee – £3 for a household up to three, £6 for four or more people – and for that can select a set number of fresh, frozen and packaged goods, as well as toiletries and household products.

Two groceries opened in autumn 2021, at Gracious Street and New Park Community Hub. Demand has grown enormously in the year since, as their reputation has spread.

The number of customers at the cafés has also risen and there are plans in place to open a third, in Killinghall, in the new year. Michelle said:

“When I set up the cafes, the community groceries weren’t even on my radar.

“Resurrected Bites has been a lot more successful than I had anticipated. It is meeting a lot of need in our community.”

It’s clear the cafés and groceries are badly needed. With the cost of living crisis hitting and recession looming, that need is only likely to grow.

It already costs £7,500 every month to deliver those vital services. Please donate to the Stray Ferret’s Christmas appeal to ensure Resurrected Bites can continue supporting people who badly need it in 2023 and beyond.

Nobody in the Harrogate district should go hungry this Christmas.

Whatever you can donate will help local people to feed themselves – and prevent food waste too.

Just £10 can pay for a family’s weekly shopping in the community grocery. Click here to contribute now.

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Many benefits

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The story of Resurrected Bites

Expansion

Community groceries

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