In 2023 Monmouthshire Food Partnership ran a community grants scheme open to third-sector organisations, community groups and social enterprises who are contributing to Monmouthshire’s good food movement. In this series of articles we are visiting some of the successful applicants to find out how they used their grants and what is happening now. Today we are with the Building Bridges project that runs across Monmouthshire.

Building Bridges provides activities, fun, friendship and work-related experiences for young people with additional needs aged between 14 and 25. They support and encourage their young people to engage in their local communities, broaden their social networks, make friends, build confidence and learn social skills to set them up for independence. In short: to live the sort of life many of us are lucky enough to take for granted. The Building Bridges team applied for funding to support a new initiative for Abergavenny and Monmouth: Nourishing Diversity.

Nourishing Diversity provides fun, interactive sessions and workshops on cooking, nutrition, and food preservation. Many of them were run by a very special lady called Lindy Wildsmith: lead volunteer, session-planner, trip coordinator and tireless  advocate for ‘food citizenship’ – shopping, cooking, and eating mindfully with respect for the ingredients and the people who produce and sell them. Lindy and the wider Nourishing Diversity team considered every aspect of the food system: from how food is produced, to where we buy it from, how to prepare and cook it, the social skills to enjoy eating in company, and the importance of wasting as little as possible. In a series of Cooking Social sessions they worked with The Cookalong Clwb to provide online and in-person cookery sessions covering household favourites like meatballs, stir fry, curry, soup, macaroni cheese, and shepherds pie. Although they sound like standard dishes we all know and love, some of the young people turned out never to have tried them before, and hardly anyone had made them from scratch. Now they all know how to put together these nourishing hearty meals – just what you need if you’re thinking about leaving home and learning to fend for yourself in the world. At the end of the series everyone got together to cook and share a celebratory meal, showing off their new skills and enjoying time with new friends.

Alongside the cookery classes, there were lots of trips. Nourishing Diversity went shopping at Waitrose in Abergavenny and Monmouth, where they were also treated to a behind-the-scenes butchery demonstration and a talk on how the supermarket sources its meat. This raises an interesting point: in all the talk about local food and supporting independent businesses, we sometimes forget that the British produce in supermarkets also comes from the family farms we drive and walk past every day. Wherever you shop, buying British really does make a difference. And beyond the farm gate, occupations like butchery, baking, and dairying are skilled professions that desperately need dedicated recruits and trainees, so it is fantastic that these young people had insights into the craft of butchery and rural job opportunities in the food industry.

Other trips included two trips to Ross-on-Wye community orchard, where the young people had a go at juicing in the autumn and cooked outdoors in the spring, like our ancestors; then there was an outing to Abergavenny Night Market, with opportunities to sample lots of unusual foods. For some of the youngsters who attend Building Bridges, busy environments and unfamiliar sensory experiences can be very overwhelming – even threatening – so everyone was really proud of them for going along and being brave about chatting to the stallholders and tasting new things. The project also went to Humble by Nature, where Farmer Tim showed them around the farm and introduced them to the animals – another very new experience for many, which raised lots of smiles.

Throughout the project there was a focus on sustainability: when you know more about where food comes from, and you’ve worked hard to shop, prepare, and cook it, you’re less likely to waste it! The cookery sessions worked closely with Monmouth Community Fridge to introduce the young people to this source of low-cost fresh food, and teach them to adapt their recipes to fit what was available on the day. This is a key part of seasonal eating and the joy of food shopping. That excitement of getting to the shop and finding the first British beans or Discovery apples have come in, and changing your meal plan to fit them in without wasting anything else.

The food waste message really hit home with participants. One young man now takes a Tupperware box everywhere he goes, just in case there is an opportunity to save some leftover food. That might make you smile, but maybe we should all be doing it: how often have you seen food go to waste at a buffet? We’ve all learnt to carry our shopping bags and water bottles around with us – why not add a Tupperware box or food wrap too?

Talking to the Building Bridges staff, it is the personal stories that really bring their work to life: not only the lad on a mission against food-waste, but also the one who has for the first time mustered the confidence to handle a cooking knife, or the young lady who started cooking online and gradually built the confidence to chat with other participants on the WhatsApp group and then venture out to in-person sessions. Building Bridges has many stories of such personal triumphs, starting small and growing to something much bigger: independence for these young people, a sense of self-worth, and a life well lived and nourished through the pleasure of personal connections and good food.