Cambridge City Foodbank

Who we are

Cambridge City Foodbank has had a presence in Cambridge for over 10 years. Our foodbank was founded by local churches, and is part of the Trussell Trust’s network of foodbanks across the UK. We provide emergency food provisions to help people in crisis but, in the long-term, we hope to support sustainable solutions to address poverty in Cambridge – eradicating the need for a foodbank altogether.
 

To keep our operations running we rely on a 200-strong team of dedicated volunteers, some of whom have been with us from the very beginning. Today, our foodbank provides food parcels from eight centres in locations across Cambridge city and beyond, ensuring we can support those areas in the greatest need. We also have three warehouses to store and organise our food donations and we work with around 100 partner agencies, enabling different avenues for referral and ways for people in need to receive foodbank vouchers.
 

In addition to the established foodbank offering, in 2018 we opened our first Fairbite shop, which offers people the opportunity to access a wide selection of foods for a small membership fee. In 2022 a second Fairbite shop was opened in St George’s Church in Chesterton. Fairbite is available to local people who are referred by a professional agency because they are struggling to afford to buy food for themselves and their families. The food in the Fairbite shop is mainly surplus stock from the warehouse and some is excess supermarket stock which comes from the national charity FareShare and Histon Produce, a local partner, donates fresh fruit and vegetables for the shop.
 

Cambridge City Foodbank continues to provide emergency support to people across Cambridgeshire and, with the help of our community, we hope to ensure that no one in our city is left hungry.
 

The Trussell Trust supports communities and churches to open foodbanks across the UK.
 

Our foodbank is part of The Trussell Trust’s network of 428 foodbanks, working to tackle food poverty and hunger in our local communities, as well as across the UK.
 

The Foodbank Network was founded in 2004 after four years of developing the original foodbank based in Salisbury. Since then The Trussell Trust has helped communities work together to launch foodbanks nationwide in a wide range of towns and cities.
 

In 2022/23, food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network provided 2,986,203 three-day emergency food supplies and support to UK people in crisis. Of these, 1,139,553 were distributed for children.
 

As a network, we want to see more people helped out of crisis and fewer people needing foodbanks in the future. That’s why The Trussell Trust and local foodbanks are working together to develop new ways to help people out of crisis through programmes like More Than Food.

Our culture and values

Our values shapes everything we do:

Compassion – We stand in solidarity with people in need and are motivated to work together to end poverty.

Dignity – We uphold the right of every person to be valued and respected for their own sake.

Justice – We are motivated by our desire for a more just society. It is not right that anyone should face poverty and hunger.

Community – We believe we have a responsibility to support one another in our community. To create change, we believe we must collaborate together for a fairer society.

Impact – We believe our work must be informed by evidence of what works and that we should use the resources we have been given wisely to create positive transformation.