As some may know, a couple of members of the SCCAN team have been liaising with colleagues and other stakeholders at both local and national level to explore the potential for food projects to generate funding for community-led climate action.
Our initial focus has been on piloting our Pay It Forward Pizza project, and we have finally secured the venue and specialist support to do this on the evening of Thursday 26 March. If you live near or are able to travel to Findhorn, please block the date in your diary and look for further information from us nearer the time (via our social media, website or newsletter).
The long term aspiration for this project is to have Pay It Forward Pizza outlets across Scotland, run ethically (e.g. in terms of produce provenance, employment practices, energy sources etc), with profits supporting community-led climate action at both the local (via funding for community driven projects) and the national (via SCCAN) levels.
The Pay It Forward dimension – still to be finalised – would enable customers to pay for a pizza or a slice of pizza for someone who needs it (e.g. a homeless person) or has earned it (e.g. someone who is doing something positive for the environment), along the lines of Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in Philadelphia and Social Bite in Scotland.
The pilot will initially focus on exploring whether selling pizza could generate funding for communities to take action on climate change and protect the environment.
The pilot will also give us insights into whether knowing that every pizza supports communities to take action on climate change and protect the environment helps to:
- raise people’s awareness of what communities can do to respond to the climate emergency,
- inspire them to take action themselves,
- instil / restore a sense of community agency and
- attract customers.
In addition to this, we have been exploring the potential to develop other food-related projects which may help respond to the climate emergency while also offering the potential to generate income for community-led climate action.
For more information on either our Pay It Forward Pizza project or our other food-related ideas, please contact our Project Development Weaver at fabio@sccan.scot.
Photo by Aurélien Lemasson-Théobald on Unsplash