Brighton & Hove Food and drink Festival: The Food Of Love

Brighton & Hove Food & Drink Festival continues to raise money for two local charities

For many years now the Brighton & Hove Food & Drink Festival has been committed to providing exciting and entertaining food- and drink-related events for the people of the city and its visitors, with a wide range of open access and free events as well as a programme of ticketed events. Many of those ticketed events have over the years been designated as fund-raising opportunities for the festival’s chosen charities. We asked festival managing director Nick Mosley to explain.
“The festival has proudly supported Rockinghorse and FareShare Sussex for over four years, raising tens of thousands of pounds to support their vital work making the lives of sick children better, and ensuring those in food poverty have access to good and nutritious food. During our Sussex & The World Weekend over the August bank holiday we raised £1,860 for FareShare with our friends from 64 Degrees, English Wine Producers, La Cave à Fromage and local vineyards – that amount covers the cost of redistributing five tonnes of food providing over 10,000 meals! In addition we raised around £1,000 for Rockinghorse through children’s activities and our Boho Disco.” – Nick Mosley, festival director.
We asked Beth Parry at Fareshare to comment:
“FareShare Sussex is a charitable project that redistributes surplus from the food industry out to organisations working with vulnerable people across the community. It enables the provision of thousands of meals to those in need every week. The food is sourced from all along the supply chain including producers, manufacturers and wholesalers through to retailers and cafes. It is then allocated to FareShare’s member organisations and prepared for delivery to around 70 different projects each week, including day centres for the homeless, lunch clubs for isolated older people and food banks for low-income families. FareShare relies on regular donations and community support to keep the warehouse rent paid, the fuel in the vans and the volunteer expenses covered, without which the project could not exist.
“The ongoing support of the Food Festival and its partners allows FareShare to spread its message across the whole community, and raises significant amounts of money for us to achieve our three core objectives – to alleviate poverty, reduce food waste and support disadvantaged people. We love to be part of something locally that is celebrating food, and the Food Festival allows our important message of preventing good food from ending up in landfill, to reach passionate local foodies.” – Beth Parry Fundraising & Communications Manager

There are lots of ways you can support the project:
To make a one-off or regular donation please visit justgiving.com/faresharesussex
You could volunteer to drive a van! Visit their website faresharesussex.org.uk for volunteer opportunities. You might even be able to refer businesses or charities. Put us in touch with suppliers or charities that would support or benefit from the service.
We also spoke to Analiese Doctrove at Rockinghorse, the festival’s other charity:
“Rockinghorse Children’s Charity, based in Brighton, has been supported by the Brighton and Hove Food & Drink Festival for the last five years. The Food Festival has raised over £10,000 supporting our work at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital and Trevor Mann Baby Unit providing vital facilities, services and medical equipment.
“Not only has the food festival enabled the charity to raise money at their many fantastic events including Make Your Case and the Children’s Food Festival they have also helped us to spread the message of our work across the city, ensuring local people know who we are and what we do. For our charity this is invaluable and for that we are incredibly grateful for all of their support.” – Analiese Doctrove
If you would like to find out more about the work of Rockinghorse and the partnership that they have with the food festival then please go to www.rockinghorse.org.uk/events/2015/childrens-food-festival
To find out more about Brighton & Hove Food & Drink Festival then go to brightonfoodfestival.com