In February we hit an exciting milestone – 5000 portions of soup made, and 2 tonnes of surplus produce saved from being wasted.
In the past six months, Sunny Soups has adapted to the demands and restrictions of lockdown and the COVID-19 pandemic. The community centre which houses our community freezer closed, and the freezer was moved into Dunbar Basics Food Bank premises. The Basics Bank has done amazing work throughout the past few months, as part of a coordinated local food response. They have been distributing our pots of soup along with their food parcels, allowing us to reach members of our community who have most needed it through lockdown.
Project leader Hannah continued to make the soup at home, using surplus produce from the Crunchy Carrot as well as some bought-in ingredients funded by a COVID crisis grant. She was assisted in this by a volunteer whose home kitchen has also passed a local authority food hygiene assessment. We’ve now been able to move a small team of three people back into our usual kitchen at Dunbar Parish Church Hall, and are supplementing Sunny Soups cooking with around 25 meals a week for vulnerable local people. These are being distributed by volunteers. This is a two-month project (with scope for longer) continuing the fantastic work done by another team throughout lockdown, coordinated by local community development workers from the council and Home-Start East Lothian.
