How surplus food is helping bring people together at a growing Swansea community hub
At FareShare Cymru, we work to ensure that good-to-eat surplus food reaches communities rather than going to waste.
In Swansea, that food is now playing an important role at Dyfatty Junction, a new community hub at the top of High Street that has quickly become a welcoming space for local people to access support, enjoy activities and connect with their community.
Since opening in June, Dyfatty Junction has become a FareShare Cymru Community Food Member, receiving weekly deliveries of surplus food from FareShare Cymru.
Putting surplus food to good use
Every Tuesday, Dyfatty Junction receives fresh fruit and vegetables alongside packaged foods that supermarkets and other businesses no longer need.
The team at Dyfatty Junction puts the surplus food to work across a range of activities, supporting both regular events and the wider community.
They turn some of the food into meals for Soup Social Thursdays and lunchtime drop-ins, bringing people together to eat, chat and connect.
They also used the surplus to cook a thank-you meal for local volunteers following a community litter-pick, giving people another opportunity to come together and celebrate their contribution.
For those who simply need or want some extra food, the hub also runs a weekly Free Food Corner, where people can drop in and help themselves to the surplus available.
Working together to make a difference
The work at Dyfatty Junction has also been supported through Enterprise Mobility’s Fill Your Tank® programme, which focuses on food insecurity.
Through its support for FareShare Cymru, the programme has helped extend the support available to Dyfatty Junction, enabling surplus food to play an even greater role within the community.
Enterprise Mobility has three offices supporting mobility across Swansea, and its wider community-giving work focuses on supporting communities through partnerships, funding and volunteering.
For FareShare Cymru, partnerships like this help us extend the reach of surplus food and support more community organisations to make use of food that would otherwise go to waste.
More than just food
Dyfatty Junction is about much more than food.
The hub brings together a range of services and community activities, including job support, health drop-ins, benefits advice and bike-repair workshops. It is also home to community groups, while the community café provides a friendly place to meet over a cup of tea and toast.
More than 250 people use the community café each week, alongside people visiting the hub for its wider services and activities.
For FareShare Cymru, being part of this kind of community setting demonstrates the wider value of surplus food. Food can provide an opportunity to bring people together, support community activities and create a welcoming space where people can access other forms of support too.
Laura Haines-Burke, Community Food Members Lead at FareShare Cymru, said:
“Dyfatty Junction is exactly how we love to see the food being used – bringing the community together.”
Tackling food waste and supporting communities
Surplus food can arise for many reasons, including over-supply, over-ordering, seasonal stock, packaging changes and production trials.
Rather than allowing this food to go to waste, FareShare Cymru redistributes it through our network of almost 200 charities, schools and community organisations across South Wales.
Dyfatty Junction is one of these organisations, finding its own ways to turn surplus food into something valuable for the people who use the hub.
From shared meals and volunteer thank-yous to the Free Food Corner, surplus food is being put to use in ways that respond directly to the local community.
It is a simple but powerful example of what can happen when good food is redirected: less food waste, more food for communities and more opportunities for people to come together.