0-Love Southampton 2022-2023

The outcomes from the event included raising awareness among all attendees about the
problem, but also the sharing of tools and best practice to deal with it. The event helped to
establish networks and improved connections between the key influencers in this area so
that future responses to food provision requirements could be achieved more easily. As part
of the event Basics Bank put together a Food Aid Toolkit document which was promoted to
all at the event. This was designed to support any groups or organisations wishing to set up
their own community larder or pantry to support their own workplace employees or
communities with access to food.
Other outcomes from the event included improved links between Southampton City
Council and the Love Southampton team, who had a meeting in early 2023 to strengthen
relationships and discuss further support for each other.
There was an online follow-up event to this in January where a check-in was offered to
anyone from the original conference above to discuss any progress or new issues that had
been raised. Chaired by Paul Woodman, and with keynotes from Dr. Debbie Chase
(Director of Public Health, Southampton City Council), Cllr. Kaur (Leader of SCC), and Mike
Harris (Chief Executive of SCC). Updates were given from our main food partners (Duncan
House, Sanjay Mall, and Sophie-Rose Fanner) on the work that they had been doing over
the winter. They used this to highlight the work of the food census in December in which 22
organisations had reported that over 17,000 meals had been handed out by food banks and
pantries in a single week.
In summary, the Cost of Living summit in October was a notable and powerful example of the
power of networking and living proof that what can be achieved collectively by organisations
can often be greater than their contributions individually. We have yet to see, or probably
realise, the extent of the benefits that the event has generated for the City of Southampton,
but clear tangible outcomes are becoming apparent and networks have been strengthened
with a number of smaller projects being incubated.
Most importantly though, the attendees at the event agreed wholeheartedly and
unanimously that one of the best things that could come from the conference was for the
delegates - who came from across Southampton - to reiterate the importance of the
message of ‘Hope’, a clear sign to some of us that God was involved in the event.
Despite this being a core tenet of Love
Southampton, this heart-warming
message to come from this conference was
not planned and emerged organically from
keynote speeches and discussions.
However, the Love Southampton team were
hugely uplifted by it and again found
further evidence that we were along the
right path with our direction in 2022.
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