Iseult Ward

But in addition to that, in Ireland, we also have three warehouses and that's what allows us to get really large quantities of food.

So when food becomes surplus for their up the supply chain, so at a farm and manufacturing,

It often comes in pallet loads.

And there aren't many organizations that would have the storage capacity transport to deal with, you know, multiple pallets of yogurts, for example.

So we have refrigerated and frozen vehicle transport.

We have fridges and freezers in our warehouses.

And, you know, we've an amazing team supported by an amazing team of volunteers as well who help us every day in collecting and delivering and storing larger quantities of food.

So we have a warehouse in Dublin, in Cork and in Galway.

And that is really what enables us to have a solution at each stage.

So where we can, the food will go directly to a community partner.

But when there's larger quantities, then we have the opportunity to collect or have that delivered, store it and then break it down into more manageable quantities for community burners.

Yeah, I think food poverty, like it is poverty and it is because people don't have enough money to purchase the food that they need.

But I think also in addition to food, when you think about food poverty, there can also be access, education and other supports that can really help people address challenges that they have around food poverty.

providing food to people is a really good support and what we find is a lot of our community partners will provide food but they'll also provide other supports to people alongside that food and in some cases the community partners big focus is helping people who don't have enough money to buy food and don't have enough food and giving food out to them is the primary goal and they'll do that but they'll also provide them with other

potential educational supports.

But then a lot of organisations also use food as a tool to build trust with people in the community who might have other challenges and need support.

So a lot of the time people might have challenges with addiction, they might have special need for different supports for education or

different challenges in their own personal circumstances where the community sector and community partners are really well-placed to step in and support.

But finding those people and reaching out to them and building the trusted relationship that's really needed to provide that support.

Food can act as a brilliant tool there.