...
- Fair-Share Point Mini Manual
- Cooperations Manual
- Foodsaving at festivals
- Disco BÔcÔ Toolkit
- Ethercalc Template Sheet for Store Pick-ups
- Benefits for Cooperating Stores
- Background Information
- Guideline for Nice Cooperation among Team Members
- Liability Contract from foodsharing Edinburgh
- Legal Statement from LivsmeDela Uppsala
...
Building a foodsharing community
...
There are many activities that can be set up to get to know each other and create bonds. Here are some ideas of events that we found relevant, fun, easy to organize and engaging:
- Fair-Share Point construction workshop: if you want to set up a location where people can share food unconditionally, this can be a wonderful activity for members to connect. Here you can find relevant information about our precious Fair-Share Points, the foodsaver's hub!
- Brunch with saved food : if Sunday brunch is a thing in your town, there will surely be open-brunch cafés and restaurants who usually have a lot of yummy leftovers that can be saved. Get in touch with them, bring a lot of containers, from small to big, and save it! If you have access to a location nearby like a neighborhood center, a foodsaver's living room or a park in the warmer days, you can invite your whole community to join for a late and sustainable Sunday brunch
- Saving at festivals: Music festivals are a great saving opportunity, not only for food but for various items people leave behind there. It also is fun to go to a festival with your friends! So why not combine the two? Here you can find more detailed information on this idea.
Of course it is as important to keep the people around as gathering them, so be sure to be nice to each other! If there are some who don't get what this means, you may want to refer to more clearly formulated criteria. In that case have a look at our guideline for nice cooperation (among the team members, in this case).
...
For some behavioral standards example, please refer to the checklist 'Professionalism for foodsavers' within the cooperation mini manual.
- Make sure you keep a secure database of your members with contacts and addresses, respectful of data privacy and protection laws
- Map the members out, it will give you a clearer overview of who can help where
...
Make sure you have enough volunteers to back up the daily pick-ups! It is important that the store considers your group as reliable, and that you keep on delivering on what you promised instead of making them wait for people who do not show up.
Here is a small manual on how to give businesses a good first impression, an appealing second one and make the third irresistible!
...
A lot of people use facebook groups, which is not ideal at all to organize the saving, but can be useful for the sharing part, since it is easy to reach a lot of people as soon as the group is slightly known by local people. To keep the overview of the saving, tables have been proven useful. If you want to, you can have a look at this Ethercalc template sheet to get an idea of what info should be included there. It's important to use something in the cloud for people to collaboratively work on. Because then there is no need for a leader who puts people on the list and foodsavers rather write their own names in the cells of the pick-ups they're interested in. This, of course, only works with reliable and reasonable foodsavers, who take the foodsaving seriously, so make sure you communicate things like expectations and etiquette accordingly! Please refer to the checklist 'Professionalism for foodsavers', which you can find in the cooperation mini manual as well, if you are interested in behavioural standards, that have been proven to be useful in Germany.
...
- First of all, you will need to thoroughly check the legal situation in your country, regarding consumption of products that have passed their Best Before Date. Foodsharing.de is legally allowed to exist thanks to a simple liability contract signed by every new Foodsaver, which acts as a waiver and clearly states that the food donor is excluded from liability of negligence. Here you can find the German one used by foodsharing.de and here the English one from the Edinburgh initiative.
- The legal situation for Fair-Share Points is slightly different but also based on foodsharing being seen as individuals sharing food without the continuity and big administartive efforts organizations provide. The Swedish initiative LivsmeDela from Uppsala has come up with a nicely written sheet on the legal situation for Fair-Share Points based on European law, which you can find here.
- It may be useful to register your community as a legal entity, which we recommend for liability reasons. Example: as a private person without a legal entity, you would take full responsibility if sued in court for food poisoning. The situations vary a lot from country to country and, frankly, we find it hard enough to research the legal situation in our own country, so hold on tight, check it out yourself and tell us what you found out!
- Staying away from money saves you a lot of trouble: You get food for free, so don't screw the nicely cooperating business by selling it!
...