Support through food

Manor Gardens Co-op

Manor Gardens Operates a weekly Food Co-op in order to provide affordable, nutritious food to local families and residents. To find out more, contact michael@manorgardenscentre.org

Islington Food Partnership

The Islington Food Partnership is an award-winning coalition of over 200 local organisations and individuals working together to build a thriving local food system for Islington. Partners include a broad range of VCSE organisations, council and health representatives, elected officials, local businesses and activists. The IFP is hosted by the Manor Gardens Welfare Trust, a local charity with 110 years’ history in providing health and wellbeing services in the community. The IFP provides information on community food services, including where to find emergency support, gathers data and information on food across the borough, shares expertise and good practice, works together to influence policies, designs and delivers projects and collaborates on fundraising initiatives to support the ambitious aims of its five-year strategy.

The IFP was established in 2020 and works through three primary channels: a strategic group, supporting determination of the direction of the partnership, a coordination group, supporting coordination of action to improve the local food system, and a membership list, where opportunities and updates are cascaded to a wide array of stakeholders in the local system. Manor Gardens Welfare Trust hosts the IFP, chairs the two group meetings and maintains the membership list.

Islington Food Co-operative Network

As a result of our emergency food distribution during the first lockdown in 2020 we worked with Islington Council, IFP and charity partners to develop and set up food co-ops across Islington.

During Covid, Manor Gardens and the IFP worked together to develop a network of seven community-based food cooperatives across Islington. The successes of our pilot network project has been brought together in our Learnings and Insights Guide, which we have written to provide our key learnings and insights to other food partnerships, local food networks, local community organisations, and local groups and individuals interested in setting up local food cooperatives.