Community Story: FareShare SouthWest

For our latest feature on an awardee of a grant from the Community Matters Fund (Future Skills) 2026 from National Grid, we are in Bristol, where Emily Earnshaw, Senior Grants Officer at FareShare South West chats to Luke Upton about responding to changing needs of communities, getting youngsters on the career ladder, what would help them most and more.

Luke Upton (LU): Thanks for the time today, Emily. To kick off, could you give our readers a little about the origins of FareShare South West and how the organisation has developed its services and support for the community over the years?

Emily Earnshaw (EE): Hi Luke, FareShare South West launched in Bristol in 2007 to tackle local hunger by rescuing and sharing surplus food. In 2020, the pandemic fundamentally changed the scale of need, alongside a surge in food waste as lockdown impacted the food industry. We delivered food for 2 million meals to over 300 groups between March and July 2020: six times our pre-crisis operations.

After the pandemic, food and living costs soared, creating a widespread cost-of-living crisis. In response, we opened a warehouse in Plymouth in 2022 to support communities across Devon and Cornwall. The site quickly surpassed projections, delivering enough food for 1 million meals each year.

In 2022, we also launched our FareChance youth employability programme, which supports young adults to gain skills and confidence whilst making a positive impact. Scarlett told us: “Knowing we’re helping hungry people makes me proud. I’ve got a really nice CV now. I’m happy I was able to battle my anxiety and come here.”

LU: Brilliant, what have you been focusing on lately?

EE: Lately we’ve been busy preparing to move into two new Hubs. As we’ve rapidly scaled up, we’ve outgrown our sites in Bristol and in Plymouth, which has restricted our ability to meet demand. We made it a top priority to find fit-for-purpose new facilities, so that we can continue to respond to the rising needs of our communities.

This autumn we’re thrilled to be moving into a new hub in Plymouth - one that is three times larger than our current site. In Bristol, we’re working in partnership with the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) and Bristol Charities to launch a landmark new food and essentials hub - currently planned to open in 2027. The new spaces will enable us to rescue and share significantly more fresh healthy food, plus they present huge opportunities to develop our employability provision for NEET (not in education, employment or training) young adults.

LU: And you’ve just received funding from the Community Matters Fund (Future Skills) 2026 from National Grid and Localgiving. Can you tell us some more about the project, what it will help fund and what it aims to deliver.

EE: We’ve been very fortunate to receive funding from the Community Matters Fund from National Grid to support a unique element of our FareChance employability programme – Warehouse Takeover Thursdays. These workshops, which run once a week, empower our trainees to take the lead at our busy South Bristol warehouse.

Bristol is a major logistics-hub, with high-demand for warehouse operative and supervisor roles. However, record numbers of young people are struggling to take their first steps on the career ladder. Through Warehouse Takeover Thursdays, young people gain hands-on experience managing tasks like stock rotation, quality control, and food health and safety, whilst developing highly transferrable skills such as leadership, decision-making and teamwork. We support the young people to develop their CVs and talk about their experience through practice interviews, directly preparing them for entry into the local job market. So, a big thank you to the teams at National Grid and Localgiving for their support in making this project possible.

LU: How important is this kind of grant funding to your organisation?

EE: The kind of grant funding that the Community Matters Fund has brought is essential for our organisation. As demand has steeply risen, so too has the price of meeting it. Global instability has created rising fuel prices, impacting the cost of food collection and delivery. Commercial energy prices are also now 75% higher than in 2021, making the cost of running our chillers and freezers that keep food fresh and meet safety standards increasingly expensive.

Meanwhile, the fundraising environment is becoming increasingly challenging, as the cost-of-living crisis squeezes household budgets and funders are overwhelmed with requests for support. Receiving restricted funding ensures that we can protect hugely impactful projects like Warehouse Takeover Thursday’s, providing meaningful opportunities for local people to thrive.

LU: And finally, as we always like to ask our interviewees, more money aside, what would help you most?

EE: Good question! Over 90% of our team are volunteers. These incredible people power all aspects of our operation, sorting, packing and delivering surplus food to charities and schools across the region. We simply could not function without volunteers, and we are always on the lookout for new people to join our team. We offer a wide range of roles, from picking food orders, to driving delivery vans, to office-based admin support.

Right now, we urgently need more volunteer van drivers to help us ensure good food reaches the people who need it most. We provide a full induction, training and support – the only requirement is to be over 25 and hold a valid UK driving license.

LU: Brilliant, thanks Emily, we look forward to following your progress.

There is more information about volunteering with FareShare South West and the different roles we currently have available on our website: https://faresharesouthwest.org.uk/volunteer/

For the latest on the Community Matters Fund click here. 

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