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Why collaboration is key to addressing poverty crisis

31 January 2025

The UK is experiencing a poverty crisis, with every indicator suggesting that poverty is becoming ingrained, in part due to the toxic combination of the global pandemic, cost of living crisis and inflation.  

We have a new government committed to tackling child poverty and making work pay, but every sector needs to play its part in addressing this crisis. This week I met with Work & Pensions Minister, Alison McGovern MP, alongside colleagues from Trussell, Amazon, who started Multibank, London baby bank charity Little Village, Pecan and St Raphael’s Family Wellbeing Centre – who are both Felix supported community organisations to discuss child poverty, what is being done already and what more needs to happen to reduce the ever growing numbers.    

At The Felix Project, we are driven by rescuing surplus food that can do amazing social good. Last year we redistributed the equivalent of 38 million meals with almost 50% of that being fruit and vegetables. We are now living through a period of history where the greatest demand on us is because people are going hungry. More and more of our work continues to be about emergency food aid rather than our primary purpose – to maximise the social impact of surplus food beyond people being in perpetual crisis. 

I see the sustained need for emergency food at the local youth club in Peckham where I volunteer. The club started receiving Felix food before I joined the charity. It was initially seen as an emergency stopgap during the pandemic but now that food has become a regular part of what they deliver and a lifeline that would be hard to remove. There are working families who would struggle to make ends meet without that food. It’s not what a youth club should be doing, but right now too many have to. 

At Felix we are passionate about impactful partnerships and one of our superpowers is the network of over 1,200 grass roots community organisations and schools that receive our food. These organisations often use Felix food and products as an enabler – a hook that helps them engage people. It gets people through the door and then the hard work really begins, whether that’s through support with employability skills, housing and debt advice, mental health support, healthy eating and budgeting - the list goes on. Nobody can tackle these problems on an empty stomach. 

I believe that cross-sector collaboration is key to alleviating and tackling this poverty crisis. I saw this in action when I recently visited Peckham Pantry, run by Pecan, where Felix supplies both food, as well as non-food items via Felix’s Multibank – a network bringing the private, public and voluntary sectors together to get surplus products, such as toiletries and crockery, to those in need. The social supermarket asks customers to pay a minimal membership fee and in return they get a genuine shopping experience. I met women who had just selected some beauty products, who told me it was the first time in years that they were able to buy something for themselves, because they are so worried about putting food on the table. It was a wonderful example of dignity of choice. Customers can also receive support from a Citizens Advice worker at Pecan, thanks to Trussell, helping them with housing or debt. It’s a whole support system and an amazing example of collaboration to help people get back on track.  

After every single conversation I have with people who receive Felix food or household items, I remind myself that food insecurity could happen to any of us – whether that’s through a family member falling ill, through addiction or mental health challenges, the sudden loss of a job or something else beyond our control. Nobody queues for hours at a food bank when they don’t have to, and this is now happening to working people in every community across the UK.  

I think sometimes people feel helpless in the face of these societal challenges. But there is hope, and organisations like The Felix Project offer boundless optimism. As well as our amazing staff, we are supercharged by over 13,000 volunteers – people who are making a tangible difference every single day to help fight food waste and feed hungry people. We are driven by our care for each other, the environment and the communities we serve and those who volunteer with us know that the food they slice, pack or deliver will be on somebody’s dinner table that week. 

The underlying truth of all of this is that, to create systemic change, there needs to be committed investment and change at a national, regional and local level with government leading the way. With this, cross-sector partners, can create lasting social impact and help tackle this poverty crisis head-on.

By Charlotte Hill, CEO of The Felix Project