Dozens of Teesside families are getting money saving cooking and shopping ideas thanks to a new project set up by the Middlesbrough Environment City Trust.
With the help of a £3,000 grant from the Newcastle Building Society Community Fund at the Community Foundation, the Trust is running a series of free classes on how to use a slow cooker to prepare nutritious, cost-effective family meals using affordable ingredients.
So far, 25 families have taken part in the programme, and each have been given their own slow cooker to take home, so that they can continue to create their own affordable meals.
In addition to these classes, the £3,000 grant has enabled the Trust to buy a new freezer for its weekly community Eco-Shop. The new freezer will be used to store any products the shop receives that are near their sell-by date, to ensure they’re not wasted.
Extra store cupboard products are also being purchased for the shop to help meet rising community demand.
Brian Simpson, director at The Middlesbrough Environment City Trust, says: “We simply wouldn’t have been able to buy the freezer or run this course without the funding we received from Newcastle Building Society and their support it making a big difference to a great many local families.
“The knowledge and ideas we’re sharing are designed to give local families a greater range of meal options - and as well as being easy to use, slow cookers are also very cheap to run, which is especially important at the moment.
“Having the freezer on hand means we can store products that are approaching their sell-by date safely and bring them out when they’re needed, so that none of the donations we receive get wasted.
Image caption: Joe Dunne, Projects Manager at Middlesbrough Environment City, Karl Elliott, Brand and Marketing Director at Newcastle Building Society, Lisa Harris, Eco-Shop Coordinator, and Brian Simpson, Middlesbrough Environment City Director.
Download the press release here.
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