Mainz is a nice city of approx. 200.000 people in the south-west of Germany with a very active and friendly foodsharing community. Kristijan Miklobusec shared the review of what happened in 2016 in this model community. The following can be seen 1) as a template of how to write an annual report, 2) as a list of things foodsharing communities can do and 3) as an inspiring story of success.

Contents:

Figures, facts and overview

For starters have a look at these figures and facts to get a quick overview of what happened with foodsharing in Mainz in the year 2016. More detailed descriptions of the various events follow further down.

New foodsavers

Approx. 100 new foodsavers registered in 2016 in Mainz.

New cooperations

We sought the attention of 28 new businesses, of which

• 17 are now cooperating with us.
• 1 is still negotiating with us.
• 6 give their surplus to food banks and don't throw away anything.
• 1 has closed.
• 1 doesn't want to cooperate.
• 2 could not be contacted yet.
  

Pick-ups

7.313 pick-ups have been carried out in total.

Active foodsavers

228 foodsavers have been involved in these pick-ups.

Amounts of food saved

13.543 kg of food have been saved.

Food-Share Points

6 FSPs exist in Mainz.

Orga meet-ups

We had 11 meetings and there are minutes for all of them.

Brunch

On 51 Saturdays there was a Brunch, always at Cronopios, Zanggasse 21.

Events for community building

• Two foodsavers from Mainz attended the big foodsharing festival in Berlin. (August)
• We held a workshop on how to preserve food by cooking and pickling it. (November)
• We have an active campus group! Whoever is interested in participating can contact Natalie under email@example.org
• We came together to make cookies, nut slices and various other baked goods to then gift them to the businesses cooperating with us. While being together we also made jams and pickles.
• For a limited time the new film by Valentin Thurn "10 Billion - How can we all get fed?" was available online for free. A small group gathered at Kristijan's place to watch it together. Thanks to Sebastian, Florian and Natalie for a nice evening!
  

PR actions

Actions and events, in which foodsavers from Mainz took part to raise awareness for food waste and promote foodsharing.

at events:

• Streetfood festival (April)
  
• Summer celebration of the students' union executive committee (July)
• Veggienale (October)
  

at music festivals:

• Open Ohr (May)
  
• Hurricane (June)
  
• Tropen Tango (August)
• Chiemsee Reggae Summer (August)
  

in Mainz:

• "Taste the waste" got publicly screened twice (once at Café Awake and once at Johannes Gutenberg University)
• Foodsharing Mainz got its very own flyer! Thanks to Katharina A. who designed it and the campus group for taking care of financing the printing.
• Kristijan held a presentation about foodsharing at a Viva con Agua gathering in April.
  

Press

A whole lot of different reports and interviews (all in German):

• Landesschau SWR
• AZ
• Merkurist
• Campus Mainz
• JGU
• Campus Radio

Special events

• Harvesting actions
• Celebration of cultures
• Distribution of fairtrade chocolate
• Foodsaving at the Christmas market
• Remarkable new cooperation: University canteens
• Book'n'Drive sponsoring

Brunch

In 2016 the foodsharing brunch took place 51 times, that equals 98% of all Saturdays. The brunch is an opportunity to come together with the most different kinds of people, regardless of social status. People can meet in an open space, meet fellow foodsavers, have nice talks and enjoy saved food. The guiding principle is "bring your surplus, take what you need" and we encourage everyone to take part, bring their friends and strengthen the bonds of our local foodsharing community.
Simply come over and spend a pleasant morning with us! If you have open or saved food left over from the week you can bring it and it will be shared with everyone, like everything else. Of course you can also come to ask whatever question you may have on your mind with regards to foodsharing! Or just to save some food.

Community building

Individual events we held or took part in to strengthen the community.

Foodsharing Festival Berlin

(tbw)

Pickling workshop

The event was announced as follows:

You saved too much food that needs to go as soon as possible? You don't have much time to cook? You are often looking for a quick and healthy meal? A great solution for all these problems at once is pickling and preparing the food to make it last longer! This Sunday afternoon we want to try out how this works, exchange recipes and experiences. To achieve this most tangibly, we'll prepare lots of pickles, jams and stock from saved food. We will have a good amount of food from our pick-ups, but if you have something you want to bring, don't hesitate to do so!

20-25 people participated in this first workshop of its kind in Mainz: Together we cut fruits and vegetables, talked about recipes and prepared long-lasting food in big pots. The food we used mainly came from the pick-up at the farmer's market and from what Carina and Thomas E. saved. In the end everybody could take home some jars of self-made vegetable stock, pickled pumpkin, potatoe and carrot as well as lots of other stuff. It was a nice time for everybody involved and we could support the 'Pfarrer Landvogt Hilfe's feeding of the homeless with some vegetable stew, fruits and veggies.

Many thanks to Elke, who was our pickling master, to Denis, for realizing this idea, to the Pfarrer Landvogt Hilfe, for letting us use their space and to the cooperating businesses, who made it possible for us to host such an event by donating their left-over food.

Founding of the campus group

(tbw)

Cookies and jams for the cooperating stores

We met in Kristijan's shared flat to make 10-12 trays of cookies and mayn jars of pumpkin jam, which were gifted to some of our cooperating businesses afterwards. Almost all of the ingerients could be saved through foodsharing, so that we only needed to buy some eggs and some foil for packaging. It was a very fun event and the stores really appreciated this way of saying thanks for this last year of good cooperations!

PR actions

Raising awareness is a big part of foodsharing! We did so with info stands, movie screenings, creating info material and holding a presentation.

Streetfood Festival

For two days we had a booth at the streetfood festival in Halle 45. Thanks to the organizer's support we could show lots of saved fruits and veggies and by that raise awareness for all the perfectly fine food that gets thrown away on a daily basis. Many thanks to Thomas and Carina E. for providing the food and to Verena E., Marlene N., Denis S., Julia B. and Kristijan M for manning the booth.

Summer celebration of the students' union executive committee

At this summer celebration we had an info stand and presented saved food again. The public was very interested and we distributed many flyers and gave out big amounts of food, mainly cake, chocolate, cookies, bread, fruits and vegetables. Many thanks to Thomas and Carina E. for providing the food and to Denis S., Verena E., Natalie N., Florian N. and Stephanie R. for taking care of the stand.

Veggienale

The last big PR event of the year for us was the Veggienale, where we participated with a booth for two days. As always, we had lots of food in our booth to give people a glimpse of the waste that is happening all around us, as well as to show them what we can already to with foodsharing to counter it. Many thanks to Thomas and Carina E. for providing the food and to Urs S., Natalie N., Verena E., Kristijan M, Melanie H. and Stephanie R. for manning the booth.

Music festivals

(tbw)

Movie screenings

In December we screened the movie 'Taste the waste', one time at the University and one time at Café Awake. The documentary made by Valentin Thurn shows drastic pictures of how much food gets wasted in our society, as well as pointing out the reasons why. The screenings were followed by lively discussions about food waste and we informed the audiences about our work with foodsharing. Both times many people (approx. 80) gathered to watch the film and discuss with us. Thanks to Thomas and Carina E. For bringing food, and to Denis B., Verena E. and Natalie N. for organizing.

Flyer

In Spring we designed custom flyers for our city! All relevant information about how to join foodsharing.de, the locations of our Fair-Share Points, when and where we hold our brunch, as well as facts and figures regarding food waste and some success stories from Mainz can be read on them. Many thanks to Katharina A. and Julia B., who helped a lot with the creation of these nice and informative pieces!

Presentation at VcA gathering

When supporting the Viva con Agua gathering with saved food, we took the chance to also inform the people there about our work with foodsharing. Kristijan planned to talk for half an hour, but due to the huge interest the presentation took two hours in the end and included lots of questions and discussions.

Special events

Individual events, which are noteworthy.

Harvesting actions

During the harvesting seasons there are lots of opportunities to save the produce, which doesn't fit the strict criteria of business. We successfully cooperated with two farmers to collect, what was left on their fields.

Pumpkins

Thanks to Julia B. we were able to convince a farmer in the neighboring region Main-Taunus-Kreis to let us save the pumpkins, which were left on the field after the harvest. If we hadn't collected them they would have been shredded.

Potatoes

Huuuge amounts of potatoes could be saved from a farm in Undenheim: We came multiple times to collect at least 12 tons of potatoes! Afterwards we distributed them in Mainz, Alzey and Kostheim. Thanks to Carina and Thomas E., as well as to Marlene N., for making this possible!

Celebration of cultures

Some of the organizers of the celebration thought of us and brought their left-over food to us after the event, without us having to ask! We then prepared it together with a professional chef at Cronopios, ate and enjoyed this very tasty foodsaving action.

Distribution of fairtrade chocolate

In June we participated in a very special distribution: The French label Ethiquable cooperated with foodsharing communities in six cities to raise awareness for the unclear and questionable best before date by providing us with more than 600 bars of fairtrade chocolate with ginger and flax seeds.
Foodsharing Mainz distributed them - always together with one flyer - in different locations on a nice and sunny Saturday and informed many people about food waste, foodsharing and what best before dates actually are. We had interesting discussions with people on the streets in Mainz and made many people happy with 'expired' chocolate.

Foodsaving at the Christmas market

Just like the years before, we cooperated with stands on the Christmas market to save the food, which wouldn't last over the winter break. When the Christmas market came to an end we were able to save large amounts of ingredients, as well as already prepared food from friendly and cooperative stall holders. We saved e.g. popcorn, many kilograms of sugarroasted almonds, different kinds of punch, cocoa, cakes, cookies, cookie dough, cut veggies, lots of oranges and other fruit, salads, schnitzels, sausages, fries, soups, sauces, baked goods and so much more. The food was distributed among the foodsavers, but also given to the Pfarrer-Landvogt-Hilfe, where it was distributed further on the next day. Thanks to Zohra G., Marlene N., Jürgen and Leila for organizing this!

Remarkable new cooperation: University canteens

Thanks to the new campus group and the ecology unit of the student's union executive committee we were able to start cooperating with the canteens of the university! We now carry out 20 pick-ups per week at the canteens only and regularly save cake, sandwiches, joghurt and fruits. This big new cooperation also interested the media, so that we were interviewed by Antenne Mainz and two newspapers published articles treating this topic, one in the Merkurist and one in Campus-Mainz. Thanks to Florian N., Urs S., Julian K. and Natalie N. for making this possible!

Book'n'Drive sponsoring

Thanks to foodsharing Darmstadt we were able to participate in an amazing donation campaign: We could benefit from Book'n'Drive car-sharing time that equals €400! We'll use this time for big pick-ups, where a car or even a van is needed. Many thanks to Book'n'Drive!

Support of refugees

In 2016 we supported two picnic events for young refugees organized by BINE e.V., held two interesting cooking parties together with the group "Falafel meets sausage" and the Advent church Mainz, as well as the ecumenical refugee relief Mainz Oberstadt and supported events of "Soulfood for Refugees". At all of these events we met lots of likeminded people. We were able to extend our network and now can also enable refugees to save food together with us and benefit from the huge surplus of perfectly fine food.

Food-Share Points

We now have 6 FSPs in Mainz, 4 are taken care of by private households and 2 by teams of foodsavers. They are controlled every day.
For 2017 we will have to put some work into our FSP infrastructure: We need to renovate and maybe rebuild the Food-Share-Points and together with the authorities we want to come up with a concept, that secures the future for the FSPs of Mainz for good. 

Neustadt-FSP

The Neustadt-FSP moved to the inner courtyaurd of the Bonifatius church (Bonifaziusplatz 1, 55118 Mainz) and is enthusiatically used by members of the church. There are more collaborations arising, we could support the summer party of the church with food or the public meal they hold every Sunday. Many thanks to the people of the Brockenhaus, where the Neustadt-FSP was hosted before. Unfortunately it had to move due to personal reasons.

Altstadt-FSP

Even though the Altstadt-FSP is not active at the moment, it's still located on the stairs of the world music academy (Neutorstraße 10, 55116 Mainz) and people appreciate it. Thanks a lot to the world music academy!

Mombacher FSP

(Bogenstraße 12, 55120 Mainz), fixed opening times

Liebermensch FSP

(Liebermannstraße, 55127 Mainz), fixed opening times

FSP in Mainz-Kostheim

Schleiergewannweg 10 \ Im Zwetschenfeld), flexible opening times

HaMü-FSP

(Am Jugendwerk 20), fixed opening times

Closing words

In summary we can say that 2016 was filled with exciting, interesting and successful events and pick-ups. When reading about our accomplishments we can only be impressed with what we as a community made possible together! So many - and so different - things took place! That is only possible because foodsharing Mainz consists of so many amazing people, who are willing and able to use their many different skills, their time and energy to collaboratively work on saving and sharing food. Foodsharing always is what people make of it and we're moved to see, that we are not only working together, but also treat each other with respect and appreciation. We built a community of friends - and we continue to build and extend it. Thanks to all the committed volunteers we can raise awareness for the massive waste of food and take action in a way that is direct, practical and offers the possibility to support others.

You are wonderful!

Peace & Love,

Kristijan, Florian and Natalie