Fresh Start

From Plot to Plate! 🌱🍽️

Fresh Start services are designed to take a holistic approach to support, while being sustainable, economic and promoting connection. The relationship between our Growing Spaces and our Community Kitchen is an amazing example of this - check out this Rhubarb and Strawberry Tart, made from ingredients grown by our Growing Spaces participants!

Produced from one of our three community gardens in North Edinburgh, these rhubarbs were delivered straight to our Cooking team in Pilton, where they were turned into a delicious dessert for our Friday 'Meet & Eat' 🙌

This kind of connection and community spirit is what Fresh Start is all about - to learn more about our services, visit the link below!

🔗➡️ https://www.freshstartweb.org.uk/what-we-do

☀️ July at Fresh Start ☀️

🌱 The Fresh Rooms and Growing Spaces teams have been particularly busy this month with all the warmer weather making painting and planting much easier! The last few weeks have seen big harvests of produce from our Growing Spaces, which go directly to the Community Pantry and Kitchen. The Fresh Rooms team have also been out and about, with projects for families and individuals, from super colourful to more subdued and neutral. Great work team!

🎒 We've been busy processing donations for our Holiday Hunger program, with non-perishable food items helping to support the Community Pantry over the summer holidays. This period sees a lot of people struggle to access enough food with their kids at home, creating an increased demand on the Pantry's stores. Thank you to all who have donated so far!

🤝 Teams from BlackRock, Clark Contracts, NatWest, Cubo - More than Work Edinburgh, Lloyds Bank and FreeAgent joined our services for volunteering sessions, supporting our Starter Pack and Fresh Rooms Services. Our corporate partners are such an important part of our services - without them, we wouldn't be able to do what we do. Thank you all for your support this month.

💙 We said farewell to our group of regular volunteers from the Rotary Club. Their efforts and impact were celebrated during their last session with us, where they enjoyed some tea and cake with the Fresh Start team. Thank you - we'll miss seeing your friendly faces in the warehouse!

🌿Staff Spotlight: Adrienne🌿

It's time to shine the spotlight on our Senior Growing Spaces Coordinator, Adrienne. Having worked at Fresh Start for 11 years, she's seen the organisation change and grow over time, and is proud of the range of services we're now able to offer. Kind, hilarious, honest and always willing to help out, Adrienne works with volunteers and service users from all walks of life to cultivate and enjoy our three Growing Spaces in North Edinburgh 🙌

Joining us with 20 years of frontline homelessness services experience, the opportunity to work with people at a more positive point in their lives was 'instantly appealing' to Adrienne. Through her work at Fresh Start, she has learnt that "the small wins are valuable and that they add up to something much bigger." While we aim to give hope to those we work with, Adrienne says that her work helps her find that hope too: "Sometimes when I look at the world I can get pretty frustrated, but then I come to work, see us working together as a team, and feel that bit by bit we can make a real meaningful change."

For Adrienne, the best part of the job is working with some incredible volunteers and service users. "We bring together people from such diverse backgrounds in the gardens - it's what makes it work." Her work with LEAP (Lothian and Edinburgh Abstinence Programme) participants is especially rewarding: "Working with LEAP and seeing people have the courage to take on their demons - there's really very little that's as inspiring as that. It's very rewarding to play even a tiny role in helping them." 💙

With so much time spent in the gardens, we bet you're all wondering - what is Adrienne's favourite thing to plant? 🌱

"The Globe Artichoke for sure. They are relatively easy to grow from seed and expand into a plant that can easily reach 5 feet tall with a huge spread. They are magnificent to look at and very tasty to eat. They come back bigger and stronger year after year."

Please join us in celebrating Adrienne and all her hard work to support those in need - Fresh Start wouldn't be the same without her! 🫶

📣 VOLUNTEERS NEEDED 📣

Join Fresh Start as a volunteer and be part of an incredible team that delivers household items, support and skills to those in need.

We're recruiting for a few volunteer roles across our services:

🚚 1x Volunteer Warehouse Driver
🧑‍🍳 1x Cooking Classes Volunteer

If you'd like to learn more about each position, visit the links below for the specific requirements and info on how to apply. We look forward to hearing from you 💙

Driver ➡️ https://ow.ly/uaCS50Zu6hb
Cooking ➡️ https://www.volunteeredinburgh.org.uk/volunteer/find-opportunities/cooking-group-volunteer-17757/

Today is World Nature Conservation Day, and the 2026 theme of 'Restoration, Resilience & Responsibility', reminds us that building and maintaining resilient environments, requires the support of committed communities like ours 🫶

At Fresh Start, we work hard to ensure that donated goods become practical support for people moving on from homelessness, instead of ending up in landfill. Last year we prevented 111,301kg of mixed goods and 15,422kg of food from going to landfill through our services. In turn, this prevented approximately 63 tonnes of carbon being released into the atmosphere!

Alongside these efforts, our Growing Spaces help those in need to find community and gain new skills by spending time in our community gardens. Working alongside volunteers, they learn how to grow their own produce, and in doing so, gain a new understanding of the importance of looking after our environment 🌱

To help support resilient environments in your community, you can:
🌳 Organise a tree planting day
♻️ Join a local rubbish collection
🚰 Reduce your water and energy use
🤝 Support sustainable charities (like Fresh Start!)
🌿Choose sustainable products
🥤 Cut down on using single-use plastics
🤓 Learn and share about local ecosystems and conservation
🏡 Create wildlife habitats like a bird feeder or bug hotel

Last week at Fresh Start, three members from the team at FreeAgent, one of corporate partners, joined our Fresh Rooms program to help makeover the new home of an individual moving on from homelessness.

To give the new tenant a fresh, clean slate for their next chapter, the living room and bedroom were painted a bright white, leaving the space ready for them to make it their own 🙌

Thanks so much to the FreeAgent team for their time and energy on this project - your efforts and support will make all the difference to the new tenant as they find their fresh start 💙

Don't forget the Pets! 🐾

The Fresh Start Community Pantry is proud to be supported by Pets UK and Blue Cross UK, an animal welfare charity, to make sure that furry members of the family are looked after too. Their annual donation drive event is coming up, and we're asking you to help us feed pets in our local community, by donating pet food at our local Pets at Home store!

📆 10th - 31st August
📍 We partner with the Pet Care Centre at Craigleith Retail Park, South Groathill Avenue, Craigleith, EH4 2LN.

Your donations will help keep people and their pets together, supporting the North Edinburgh community and members of the Community Pantry - thank you for your support!

Pets Foundation

There's still time to help us prevent holiday (and post-holiday) hunger! 🤝

Throughout the summer holidays, many families struggle to afford the cost of extra groceries while the kids are at home. To help support those who need it, the Fresh Start Community Pantry offers family memberships (available 6th July - 14 August) over the summer holidays. While we're proud to offer this service, it calls for a huge amount of extra stock to support demand - this is where we need your help!

You can support the Community Pantry over the summer holidays- and beyond! - by donating non-perishable food items, which can be found on our website. Donations just like this one from St John's Episcopal Church, can be dropped off to our warehouse during opening hours.

📍22-24 Ferry Road Drive Edinburgh EH4 4BR
📆 Monday - Thursday 9:00am - 4:00pm, Friday from 9:00am - 1:00pm.

Want to donate but can't make it to our warehouse?

Contact [email protected] for more information on your closest alternative drop off point. Thank you so much for your support 💙

Fresh Start was first established by members of the local community who wanted to make a difference - and since then, we've been lucky to work with clubs, groups and churches across the city. We're so grateful to all our existing community partners who support the work we do💙

If you're part of a community group that would like to get involved with making a difference to the lives of people moving on from homelessness here in Edinburgh, check out the options below 👇

☕Fundraise for Fresh Start: from jumble sales to coffee mornings, organising a fundraising event is a great way to raise funds, while bringing your group together to take part in something fun.
📦Organise a donation drive: a food collection ahead of the Harvest Festival would help us stock the Community Pantry, or donations of household goods would be used to make Starter Packs for people moving on from homelessness.
📍Become a regular collection point for Fresh Start: we always appreciate when organisations establish a collection point on their premises, where people can bring donations for our Starter Packs. Having these points around the city means everyone can help, no matter where they are.
🎤Host a presentation: invite a member of our team to come along to one of your sessions and deliver a presentation about Fresh Start.

If you'd like to learn more about the work Fresh Start is doing, and ways that your organisation can get involved, please email [email protected] to find out more. We can't wait to hear from you! 🤝

Our Fresh Start Growing Spaces are THRIVING in the sunshine🍓☀️

Check out a recent haul of produce from one of our gardens, grown and harvested by our incredible team of volunteers!

They spent a recent sunny morning picking beetroot, kale, strawberries and gooseberries, some of which went on to be used by our Community Kitchen and Community Pantry services, to support others who are in need.

Well done team - they look amazing 🙌