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Ep 30. Charlotte Hill OBE, CEO The Felix Project: The Food Rescuers!
98 Plays3 years ago
“A big piece of what we are trying to do is work with the partners to get the food to where it’s working hardest… food is (just one) part of breaking the cycle of food insecurity.”
Charlotte Hill is the new Chief Executive of The Felix Project, a charity dedicated to redistributing food and fighting food poverty in London.
The Felix Project believes in a vision of London where no-one goes hungry and good food is never wasted.
With an ambition to deliver 100 million meals a year to Londoners by 2024, The Felix Project collects surplus food from suppliers and delivers them to over 1,000 front line organisations, such as food banks, charities and schools. All with the purpose of reducing food waste and to help the most vulnerable in London, by providing access to fresh food and healthy meals.
Charlotte is a second time guest on this podcast and shares how her passions for engaging with young people and volunteers, sustainability and driving place-based change, have now all come together in the fight against food poverty. She shares a clear aspiration for stopping the cycle of food waste and food insecurity in London, enabling the city to be more sustainable and a genuine world leader in this space.
Recorded January 2022.
Guest Biography
Charlotte Hill became CEO of The Felix Project in January 2022. Prior to that Charlotte was the Chief Executive of Step Up To Serve, the organisation that coordinated the #iwill campaign, from 2014 to 2020. From 2010 to April 2014 she was the Chief Executive of UK Youth.
Charlotte started her career working in Parliament for Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman QC MP in a number of roles. After five years with Harriet Harman, Charlotte moved to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) as their Parliamentary Advisor.
After the NSPCC, Charlotte moved to Australia and worked for a Government Relations & Communications Consultancy and for a children’s charity in Sydney. She also later worked in Cambodia, teaching English in an orphanage.
Charlotte is a Trustee of the EFL Trust, an RSA Fellow and a Board member of Westminster House Youth Club in her local area. She has a degree in Political Science & Philosophy from Birmingham University.
In 2012 Charlotte received the award of ‘Rising CEO Star’ at The Charity Times Awards. In 2016 she became Alumna of the Year at the University of Birmingham. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE for services to young people.
Links
https://thefelixproject.org/
This episode was sponsored by EdenTree Investment Management.
https://www.edentreeim.com/insights/edentree-sponsor-the-charity-ceo-podcast-season-3
Charlotte Hill is the new Chief Executive of The Felix Project, a charity dedicated to redistributing food and fighting food poverty in London.
The Felix Project believes in a vision of London where no-one goes hungry and good food is never wasted.
With an ambition to deliver 100 million meals a year to Londoners by 2024, The Felix Project collects surplus food from suppliers and delivers them to over 1,000 front line organisations, such as food banks, charities and schools. All with the purpose of reducing food waste and to help the most vulnerable in London, by providing access to fresh food and healthy meals.
Charlotte is a second time guest on this podcast and shares how her passions for engaging with young people and volunteers, sustainability and driving place-based change, have now all come together in the fight against food poverty. She shares a clear aspiration for stopping the cycle of food waste and food insecurity in London, enabling the city to be more sustainable and a genuine world leader in this space.
Recorded January 2022.
Guest Biography
Charlotte Hill became CEO of The Felix Project in January 2022. Prior to that Charlotte was the Chief Executive of Step Up To Serve, the organisation that coordinated the #iwill campaign, from 2014 to 2020. From 2010 to April 2014 she was the Chief Executive of UK Youth.
Charlotte started her career working in Parliament for Rt. Hon. Harriet Harman QC MP in a number of roles. After five years with Harriet Harman, Charlotte moved to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) as their Parliamentary Advisor.
After the NSPCC, Charlotte moved to Australia and worked for a Government Relations & Communications Consultancy and for a children’s charity in Sydney. She also later worked in Cambodia, teaching English in an orphanage.
Charlotte is a Trustee of the EFL Trust, an RSA Fellow and a Board member of Westminster House Youth Club in her local area. She has a degree in Political Science & Philosophy from Birmingham University.
In 2012 Charlotte received the award of ‘Rising CEO Star’ at The Charity Times Awards. In 2016 she became Alumna of the Year at the University of Birmingham. In 2019 she was awarded an OBE for services to young people.
Links
https://thefelixproject.org/
This episode was sponsored by EdenTree Investment Management.
https://www.edentreeim.com/insights/edentree-sponsor-the-charity-ceo-podcast-season-3
Recommended
Transcript
Addressing Hunger Issues in London
00:00:00
Speaker
I think what we shouldn't be trying to do is chase an ever-growing number of more and more people getting hungry. That for me is not success. Of course, we want to rescue all of the good food, but we also want to be working with organisations in partnership with others where we're trying to help solve this problem. We should not be living in a world where more and more Londoners are hungry.
00:00:21
Speaker
So for me, a big part of what I want to do in this job is not just absolutely make sure we are getting food to where it's needed, but also that we're working with partners across the board to think about actually how are we breaking this cycle of food insecurity?
Introduction to the Charity CEO Podcast
00:00:45
Speaker
This is Season 3 of the Charity CEO Podcast, the podcast for charity leaders by charity leaders. I'm Divya O'Connor, and I never imagined that this show that I started as an experiment during the pandemic would turn into a number one ranked global podcast with thousands of listeners all across the world. It is truly humbling to know that the show's content is valued by so many.
00:01:09
Speaker
And, thanks to our Season 3 sponsor, Eden Tree, I will continue to bring you inspirational and engaging conversations with a host of leaders who are all truly driving change in the non-profit space. Eden Tree themselves are owned by a charity, and have led the way in responsible and sustainable investing for over three decades. Thank you to Eden Tree. Now, on with the show.
Charlotte Hill's Journey with the Felix Project
00:01:32
Speaker
Charlotte Hill is the new chief executive of The Felix Project, a charity dedicated to redistributing food and fighting food poverty in London. With an ambition to deliver 100 million meals a year to Londoners by 2024, The Felix Project collects surplus food from suppliers and delivers them to over 1,000 frontline organisations such as food banks, charities and schools.
00:01:55
Speaker
all with the purpose of reducing food waste and to help the most vulnerable in London by providing access to fresh food and healthy meals. Charlotte is a second-time guest on this podcast and shares how her passions for engaging with young people and volunteers, sustainability, and driving place-based change have now all come together in the fight against food poverty. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.
00:02:21
Speaker
Hi Charlotte, and welcome back to the Charity CEO podcast. You are the very first guest to have the honour of appearing on the show for the second time. Thank you so much for having me. I feel that it's a deep honour. I'm, yeah, I'm humbled to come back. It feels like my life is very different than it was when I last spoke to you.
00:02:38
Speaker
Yes, you were one of the very first people I interviewed in the early days of season one of the podcast. And when we previously spoke, you were still at the BBC Children in Need. And today you are here, of course, to tell us all about your brand new job as the CEO of The Felix Project.
00:02:53
Speaker
I am indeed, which is really exciting and it's very new. I am kind of two weeks in. So yeah, you're getting me absolutely fresh in a new chief exec role, which is, as everyone knows who's been a chief exec, equally exhilarating and daunting and exhausting and energizing. It's always a crazy beginning, isn't it?
00:03:12
Speaker
Yes, I know that feeling well. And congratulations on your new job. And thank you so much Charlotte for taking the time so early on in your tenure to sit down with us today. Now, as you are a second time guest, we have already done the icebreaker questions. So you may be relieved to know that we're not going to do all of those again. And if any listeners are interested in hearing Charlotte's full icebreaker round questions, I do encourage you to go back and listen to episode four.
00:03:39
Speaker
But Charlotte, I would like to ask you just two questions that I didn't ask you the first time around. And so if that's all right, we will start with those. Go for it. So our first question is, if you had a magic wand and could change one thing in the world right now, what would that be? Oh my goodness.
00:03:57
Speaker
I would get rid of the global pandemic. I would allow us all to feel like we can go about our daily lives without restriction and constraint and fear of passing things on to others and not seeing our loved ones and not feeling we could go into work and be with our colleagues. This is front of mind for me because my children and I and my husband have all just had COVID again. So we've just come out of isolating for a lot, what feels like forever with two small children being locked in our houses again.
00:04:27
Speaker
And so for me, just wanting to be able to go and see my family without constraint again is just something I would love for the whole world. So that would be it because it's having such an impact on people's wellbeing and income and livelihoods and so many reasons why it's impacting on people.
00:04:45
Speaker
And the second question, as we are recording this in January 2022, do you have any predictions for 2022? What do you see in store for all of us this year? I mean, I'm an optimist naturally, so I am going into 2022 full of
00:05:00
Speaker
optimism that, as I said, 2020 and 2021 have not been belters for many people for all sorts of reasons. And so I'm thinking, right, come on 2022, you are going to bring all sorts of wonderful opportunities for us all. So I think we will be finding opportunities in this new world and this new way of living. And I think we will find new ways to collaborate with others. And I think we will find new ways to support each other.
00:05:26
Speaker
and I think we will have to be innovative because it's going to continue to be challenging times.
The Felix Project's Mission and Growth
00:05:31
Speaker
So I'm looking forward to innovation and collaboration and positivity and people hopefully feeling like we are coming out the other side of this pandemic and that great things are going to happen in 2022. I'm feeling great about it.
00:05:44
Speaker
Oh, brilliant. I love your optimism and enthusiasm there. That's fantastic to hear. So let's come on now, Charlotte, to talk about your exciting new job as the chief executive of the Felix Project. I mean, tell us about the organization. Who is Felix and what is the Felix Project all about?
00:06:01
Speaker
I would love to tell you about the Felix Project because I am feeling so humbled and honoured to be the Chief Executive of this organisation. So in March, the Felix Project will be six. So it's a relatively young organisation and it was founded on a tale of tragedy actually.
00:06:17
Speaker
But on the back of what sounds like an absolutely phenomenal young man, Felix Biamshaw, who sadly died at age 14 very suddenly, and he had been a young man. And you know that I am passionate about the contribution that young people make in society. He had been a young man who was filled with wanting to make the world better. He was compassionate and kind and
00:06:39
Speaker
energetic and really cared about the environment and really cared about people having enough food. They were two of his great passions. And so when he died, his parents, Jane and Justin, along with some of their friends, wanted to do something in his honor. And so the long story short, and there's a whole lot that Jane and Justin and Michael and others speak about really passionately,
00:07:00
Speaker
was that they set up the Felix project and this started off as a very small operation out of a garage and it was around taking surplus food that was not needed and giving it to people who did need food. It was a very simple premise and this started in West London with a group of their friends doing this and it has grown and grown and grown in the name of Felix and actually the Felix logo is Felix's signature on a Mother's Day card which gets me every time
00:07:28
Speaker
It's on all of our vans and it's everywhere you see the Felix Project. That is Felix's actual writing to his mum, which I just feel so powerful. He is with us every day, which I love. And yeah, it's grown now to last year, over 30 million meals were distributed across London. It's huge. There are now four depots in north, south, east and west London. We have the Felix Kitchen, which not just distributes food out to organisations, but actually turns it into meals and we feed people directly.
00:07:58
Speaker
in East London. There is a Central London team where we get volunteers in Central London going straight to your fast food chains and taking their surplus food straight to homeless hostels and refuges. There is so much energy. There are over 1,000 organisations who now receive food from Felix all across London. It's
00:08:16
Speaker
a powerful machine very much powered by volunteers, which I'm so passionate about, as you know. So we have over a thousand volunteers who work in our depots and across the Felix family, just making sure that this food gets to the people where it's needed from brilliant food distribution partners. So
00:08:34
Speaker
It's a very practical, hands-on operational organisation, taking food where it's not needed and taking it to where it is needed in a really just incredibly powerful way. I'm observing just the magic as it happens. It's really amazing to see the organisation work.
00:08:51
Speaker
Wow that sounds like such a fantastic organisation and I understand that it is something like 10 million tonnes of food that gets wasted every year and that's really such a mind-boggling number but I'd like to understand a bit more Charlotte about how you define surplus food. Is this food that has expired? I mean how do you define that?
00:09:13
Speaker
No, this is high quality food. So we don't like to use the word food waste because it implies to people that this is not great food. This is amazing quality, fresh food that for all sorts of reasons we're rescuing from the food industry. It might be that they ordered more than they needed and it didn't sell or it might be that it's coming
Surplus Food and Misconceptions
00:09:32
Speaker
to the end towards the end of its life, but still very much in life. So we always make sure things are within their use by dates that we give to our organisations.
00:09:40
Speaker
But it's incredible quality, fresh food. And that's something I think we, why we try and talk about rescuing food rather than it being food waste. So, and we are scratching the surface. I'm realizing there is so much surplus food out there in the food industry and all sorts of different ways. And some of this we get direct from farms. So this isn't just from supermarkets. In fact, I was speaking to a colleague yesterday about where we go out to farms and for example,
00:10:06
Speaker
After Halloween, there's a massive glut of pumpkins that don't get used. And so we had teams and teams of people going out to these pumpkin fields and bringing, and we had thousands of pumpkins that were distributed all across London that we were telling people what to do with pumpkins and how to make pumpkin soup and so on. And similarly, we had this brilliant partnership.
00:10:26
Speaker
with Mindful Chef where they did something called Reverse Advent Calendar. Everybody could give food rather than just getting food. We had thousands and thousands of these boxes came back from Mindful Chef of people donating food. We had all these brilliant things that came from people going to families and to communities that needed them.
00:10:44
Speaker
The food comes from all sorts of different places, from small outlets to ginormous supermarket chains, from fresh farm produce to your prat. It's a real mixed bag of food that needs to find a good home, and we help it find that home. I love how you describe that there, Charlotte, as rescuing fresh food and that it's not food waste, and I think that's a really important distinction, so thank you for making that distinction.
00:11:09
Speaker
And so the Felix Project is, as you said, a London-based charity. Tell us more about the scale of the problem in London. Give us a sense of the need that the Felix Project is helping address. Well, sadly, we've done work with a number of different partners trying to look at actually what is the demand in terms of... Because I guess we're a two-pronged charity. One is what is the supply? So how much surplus food is there that we could actually get? And that feels to be like a huge piece of it. And then the other side, of course, as you say, is what's the demand?
00:11:39
Speaker
Now, McKinsey did a piece of work with The Felix Project that looked at sadly needing about 120 million meals a year for London to be fed, which is a huge amount. We are at the moment doing just over 30 million meals a year. So there is
00:11:54
Speaker
a huge demand out there that could be met. Now, for me, I think what we shouldn't be trying to do is chase an ever-growing number of more and more people getting hungry. That for me is not success. Of course, we want to rescue all of the good food, but we also want to be working with organizations in partnership with others where we're trying to help solve this problem. We should not be living in a world where more and more Londoners are hungry.
00:12:20
Speaker
So for me, a big part of what I want to do in this job is not just absolutely make sure we are getting food to where it's needed, but also that we're working with partners across the board to think about actually how are we stopping people and breaking this cycle of food insecurity for
Community Building Through Food
00:12:37
Speaker
people. So a big piece of what we're trying to do is work with the partners to get the food to where it's working harder.
00:12:43
Speaker
So it's not just about making sure someone's not hungry for six hours. It's about working with partners who bring people in as well as providing them food and potentially helping them with their employability or routes to employment or with their benefits or with their homelessness or housing issues. So we want to work in collaboration with organizations where food is part of what is being offered, but actually that's part of
00:13:07
Speaker
breaking the cycle of food insecurity and that's absolutely fundamental to what we want to do. And also, really make sure we understand that food is a great convener. People come together and communities come together around food. It is an incredibly powerful thing, not just because we all need it to survive, but also because of the great thing I've seen in the Felix kitchen. We've brought people in from all sorts of different cultures and backgrounds in East London
00:13:35
Speaker
who are teaching us their favourite home recipes. It's been a brilliant thing so that the food that's produced out of the kitchen represents all of the different cultures that are in Tower Hamlets and beyond. And that in itself has just been an amazing community builder, bringing all those different generations together, those different communities together in volunteering, in trying each other's food, in sitting together. So everyone in the Felix kitchen has lunch together. We all sit together and eat together.
00:14:02
Speaker
And again, whether you're a volunteer or someone working in the depot or whoever you are, you're coming together around food. So for me, it's around how we're helping solve hunger, but also how we're bringing communities together around that amazing thing that is sharing a meal with someone.
Pandemic-Driven Growth of the Felix Project
00:14:19
Speaker
I'm really struck by the way you described that, Charlotte, because I think it's so important that various organisations across the charity sector are addressing the root causes of the various problems that we see in society in order to truly be part of the solution and bring a solution to the foreground and that we are not just dealing with the symptoms. And absolutely, as you say, food is a great convener. So what a fantastic cause you have there. And
00:14:48
Speaker
Charlotte, I know that unlike many other charities during the pandemic that the Felix Project actually saw significant growth and that your income grew from just under £2 million in 2019 to a whopping £12 million plus in 2020. I mean, that is truly extraordinary. So very well done to your team. And I know that was against the backdrop of the pandemic, but tell us what really fueled that massive income growth?
00:15:15
Speaker
It was immense and what's been really interesting, obviously over the last six months through both the interview process and getting the role and getting to know the organisation, what has been really clear is this organisation has grown so significantly in that period. And that's partly been driven by need. Unfortunately, the pandemic showed that there were lots and lots of
00:15:35
Speaker
Londoners who needed the support and voluntary sector organisations across London serving those communities who needed the support of the Felix Project. And I think one of the things that's really important that we talk about is, is we do not, we're not a food bank. We don't give food directly to individuals. We give our food to charities who work with those organisations. So a huge amount of why the demand grew was because those organisations, those small community organisations across London, who in lots of different ways are serving those communities, they saw their need go up.
00:16:05
Speaker
So we needed to do more to support them and more of them needed our support and more and more organisations, as you know, ended up, you know, my own local youth club is a great example. We're a youth club. We've never delivered food to our families before, but during the pandemic, there was a huge need for us to do that.
00:16:23
Speaker
So more and more organisations have needed the food. That's one part of it. I think that the profile around this work has been hugely driven forward by people like Marcus Rushford. We are the London part of the Fairshare network. So we're a big partner of Fairshare. We work really closely with them. They provide a lot of our food.
00:16:42
Speaker
And so I think also the awareness around food rescue has also been really driven by brilliant and amazing people like Marcus Rashford. So I think that's been part of it. But I also think we had a huge surge in volunteers. So lots of people, whilst they were furloughed, for example, really wanted to make a difference. And we saw this in so many brilliant ways across society, people who hadn't necessarily volunteered before,
00:17:07
Speaker
thought, you know what, I really want to think about what contribution I can make. And so we also, we're absolutely dependent on volunteers. So you talk about our kind of income growing during that period, which it really did, but also our volunteer base hugely grew, which is, I think of the Felix projects as being this kind of
00:17:24
Speaker
Venn diagram of things that all have to grow at the same time for it to work. So yes, we have to grow our income. We also have to grow our food supply base. We also have to grow our volunteer base and we have to grow our network of partners where we distribute the food too. And unless we can grow all of those things at the same time, the model doesn't work. So I think we saw a kind of perfect storm in a way during the pandemic where
00:17:49
Speaker
demand grew, the group of volunteers grew, the food supply industry had more awareness and that grew, and income came in because lots of people saw that this was a huge need. So amazing partners that donated money and the public. And the final bit of the jigsaw in all of that was we had this phenomenal partnership with the Evening Standard, which
00:18:10
Speaker
hugely raised the profile of the Felix project. So all of those elements came together, but we also had a huge spotlight shine on us because we were the evening standards kind of charity partner across the year. And they did a massive amount to raise the profile of the organization across London. And that I think was one of the great kind of significant factors of having a brilliant media partner who has been from all I can see way more than a media partner. They have
00:18:39
Speaker
absolutely taken the Felix Project into the family of the Evening Standard. And I was actually with someone from the Evening Standard yesterday, their commitment to the Felix Project through getting people out volunteering and all of the different ways they've partnered with us has been really powerful.
Future Impact and Sustainable Growth
00:18:53
Speaker
So that's a long answer to what was, I think, quite a complex big group of different things that came together that saw that growth.
00:19:00
Speaker
Shala, as you were talking there, I was having visions of the Felix Project coming in as the food rescuers with all of your volunteers flying in with green capes and coming in to rescue food across London and redistribute it. Feel free to use that cape analogy or mascot going forward for the organisation if you do want to.
00:19:20
Speaker
Honestly, I love that. I genuinely think the word rescue absolutely is a powerful word, isn't it? Yes, the Felix Project, the food rescuers. Yeah, it's really powerful. And I think all of our organisations should feel hugely empowered that they are part of this cycle. A massive part for me and for lots of the volunteers about why they're engaged with the organisation is because we are
00:19:45
Speaker
hugely helping sustainability and reduce the carbon footprint and all of this waste. It's as much an environmental sustainability ecology charity as it is a charity addressing food insecurity and food poverty. And that for me is a really powerful part of what every organisation who takes food from the Felix Project, they are part of actually making the world more sustainable and environmentally friendly. So there's a real power I think in that network
00:20:13
Speaker
being part of that kind of ecological solution because this food would be thrown in the bin otherwise and we all know not only how ethically wrong that is but environmentally challenging that is. Absolutely, there's such a multiply effect as you say there in terms of the sustainability and the environmental impact as well. But coming back to the extraordinary growth that the organisation saw in 2020,
00:20:36
Speaker
Do you think the organisation will be able to sustain that growth? I mean, what did income look like in 2021? And what are your priorities now looking at 2022 in order to really build the infrastructure and ensure that there is that solid foundation from which the organisation can now springboard into much more exponential impact?
00:20:57
Speaker
First of all, the organisation cannot and should not sustain that level of growth. It's not sustainable to grow at that pace continuously. So whilst we have ambitious plans, for me, it comes back to that word impact. What is the impact? It's not about outputs and numbers for me. It's about what is the impact that our food is having.
00:21:16
Speaker
And so one of my big priorities and the organisational priorities for 2022 is really making sure we drill into the impact of our food. Why is the world different because of where this food is going? And how are we genuinely driving impact and societal change with
00:21:34
Speaker
the food and in partnership with our partners and with people like Fairshare and the Trussell Trust and others who are all really committed to driving this agenda. I don't see this as something the Felix Project are going to try and do on our own at all. I think we should be working with other players in this space to really think through how are we genuinely decreasing the demand for this. So one of the big priorities is looking at impact. The other is making sure
00:22:02
Speaker
we are sustainable as an organization. So that means sustainable in terms of our volunteer growth. That means sustainable in terms of our income. That means sustainable in terms of our workforce more broadly, staff as well as volunteers. That means sustainable in terms of the way we get the food from A to B to C. So there's all sorts of things, I think, where we just want to make sure, of course, we're ambitious for the future. Of course, we want to make sure no good food is wasted and there is a huge amount more we could be rescuing.
00:22:29
Speaker
But we absolutely need to do that in a sustainable way. So making sure we've genuinely got diverse income streams that are long-term sustainable, and some of them potentially kind of commercial income streams, as well as voluntary income streams. But also how are we making sure we've got the right mix of workforce, we've got the right volunteers doing the right things in the right places, that we are cherishing and recognizing our volunteers.
00:22:56
Speaker
that we are bringing in a diverse group of volunteers. And that's something, as you'll know from when we spoke last time, you know, I think we could do a huge amount to get more young people. They are passionate about environmental change. They are the people who are going to inherit this world. So I think there's a massive amount we can do around getting more young people involved in the Felix Project. We already do some brilliant stuff in schools across London and have some great pockets of brilliant stuff we're doing, but there's so much more we can do there. So for me,
00:23:23
Speaker
diversifying not just our income streams, but our volunteer base is something I'm really, really committed to this year as well. So lots on the horizon and also I've got a lot to learn. I'm two weeks in. I need to also listen and learn from colleagues and volunteers and trustees and partners across the sector.
00:23:42
Speaker
Yes, I'm really pleased to hear you talk about impact in terms of it's not just numbers and outputs. And I absolutely agree with you on that. There are so many dimensions to impact and I think it's really important as organizations, we actually have a clear idea of what that definition of impact is. And it can be many things, as you say, it's not just necessarily one thing because of this multiplier effect from your work.
00:24:08
Speaker
But tell us a bit more in terms of when you mentioned priorities, what you're focusing on right now with the organization.
00:24:14
Speaker
I think one of the things that we've said, we're really ambitious for what we want to do, but also because we've had such significant growth, we want to make sure every single thing we do is excellent. So we've got this program called Brilliant Basics that we're driving across 2022, which is just looking across no matter what bit of the organization you are, how do we make sure we have those fundamental building blocks in place that we're calling the Brilliant Basics?
00:24:40
Speaker
that mean that the organisation will be able to then be in a position to continue to grow. I think when you've grown at such a rate, you just need to sometimes take a little pause and a stop check and just think, right, do we have everything in place that we need to before we embark on our next phase? 2022, as well as all those other things I described, is a year of brilliant basics for the Felix Project.
00:25:02
Speaker
Give us some examples of what those brilliant basics are in terms of systems or IT. Yeah, IT is a really good example. We are looking across the board at if we're giving people multiple different logins for multiple different systems, actually, is there a way that we can bring and simplify some of our technology solutions into one place? There's a big piece of work around that.
00:25:24
Speaker
but also, you know, across our processes and policies and procedures and all of those things that people think of as being a bit boring. Just doing a proper review across everything and making sure everything is properly what we need for the scale of organization we are now compared to what was a small startup is now a much bigger organization. So it's just a sense check across everything we do around just making sure we've got all of those brilliant basics in place across the organization.
00:25:50
Speaker
Brilliant. There is certainly a saying in business that you really have to nail it before you scale it. And I think in the context of organizational growth and really having a solid foundation with all of the fundamental systems and processes that enable the growth and enable the organization to continue operating at scale is so important. Absolutely. Everyone is really welcoming the opportunity to do it. Having been on such a roller coaster of growth, I think everybody is welcoming the opportunity to
00:26:18
Speaker
take a pause and properly make sure we've got everything in place because there are a brilliant bunch of people wanting to just make a massive impact. And in terms of young people and engaging them more, Charlotte, I know there's a new initiative called the Felix's Kitchen that you mentioned earlier on. Tell us more about that and is it something that has been set up to engage more young people?
Volunteer and Educational Initiatives
00:26:40
Speaker
So the Felix's Kitchen came about as an idea that one of the things we were hearing from partners was that for some of their recipients, getting just the raw produce, whether that's vegetables or canned goods or whatever it is, if you're living in real poverty where you might not even have a kitchen, you might not have an oven, you might not have a cooker,
00:26:59
Speaker
getting a meal rather than just the kind of raw ingredients for a meal is a really important thing to be able to offer. And so we heard that and we thought, well, in East London, we were building the East London Depot, let's build a kitchen that could do that, that we could use our surplus food. So it's still using all of the surplus food that the Felix Project gets.
00:27:19
Speaker
and turn that surplus food into meals. And then those meals go directly to the organization so that people are getting a meal rather than getting just the raw ingredients to make a meal. So that was the kind of premise. It's been open for about six months. And part of what we do there is we also, to your point,
00:27:36
Speaker
have employability schemes. So young people come in and learn the skills in the kitchen from, I've got to say, some first-class chefs. We have our own amazingly experienced brilliant chefs there who mentor and support the people coming through.
00:27:52
Speaker
But we also bring in brilliant celebrity chefs who come in and do stints in the kitchen, which is really exciting and everyone loves it. But also alongside that, we bring in teams of volunteers who help in the kitchen every single day. If ever you get the chance, come out and visit us there because it is the most amazing place to have a kitchen and a depot because on one side of the depot, you can see the real poverty of East London. You turn your head and you look out the other side and you see Canary Wharf.
00:28:20
Speaker
and all of the billions of pounds that are in that place. And it's a very powerful physical reminder of the fact that we live in a city of absolute plenty, yet there are people on our doorstep who can't even afford to be able to cook their own meal. And so we get loads of corporate volunteering teams from Canary Wharf and beyond
00:28:40
Speaker
who come in and as part of their kind of corporate social responsibility as a team come in and volunteer in the kitchen. It's a brilliant community builder, a brilliant way of us bringing lots of different people, and we get lots of local volunteers from local communities as well, but also a way that we're bringing young people in and training them up at a point when the hospitality industry is very short of people. We know that there is a real crisis around recruiting people in, so we're also trying to bring people in and train them up so that they can go on into careers in the hospitality industry as well.
00:29:10
Speaker
That sounds like such a brilliant initiative. My skills in the kitchen, I dare say, aren't that great. So maybe I will learn a thing or two if I do come down to visit at some point. But Charlotte, I'd really like to ask about food waste.
00:29:25
Speaker
And I know that's not the term you like to use, but I'm thinking all of us in our households throw away lots of food that is actually fresh. It just hasn't been used. And I'm just wondering whether the organization provides any awareness or education in terms of tips to people on how they might be able to reduce their food waste.
00:29:46
Speaker
So we do this through our schools programme. So absolutely we think young people understanding and learning this message so from a young age they get that habit, but also they can go back and talk to their parents and their siblings and their families about food waste is one route we do that. I think we can do an awful lot more around this space. I also think there's a huge amount the Felix Project could be doing around, we at the moment use this kind of depot model and it's slightly different in central London, but largely it's a depot model.
00:30:14
Speaker
There is a huge opportunity for us to be able to think through how we're tackling your... And I could be wrong on this, but I think about 30% of the food wasted is wasted in the household. So I think there's a huge opportunity to do more there, partly around education, but also around how do we work with people that if you have got spare food, that you share it with your neighbors or you share it with your community.
00:30:37
Speaker
It feels to me there's a huge amount of opportunity in this. And I know there's some people who have developed some clever apps around exactly these sorts of
Vision for Sustainable Food Practices in London
00:30:44
Speaker
things. So I think there's a real opportunity for us to partner with some people who are doing this, partly around education, but partly about some really practical solutions that people can use to share their wasted or the food they no longer need.
00:30:56
Speaker
Excellent. I know it's very early day, Charlotte, and I'm so inspired by the way you talk about the Felix projects, but I'd like to ask what your vision for the future of the organisation is. What would you like to accomplish at the Felix project?
00:31:12
Speaker
Our vision as an organisation, and this is a huge vision, is a London where no good food is wasted and no Londoner goes hungry. Now, that is huge and something we are not going to solve alone. But for me, I was really inspired by the Earth Shop Prize that Milan won, where Milan made a commitment as a city
00:31:32
Speaker
that they were not going to waste food. So my vision and what I would love to do, and I haven't had a chance to talk to City Hall and some of the great big players in London yet, is let's look at what is the infrastructure in London? Who are the people we'd need to bring together to really genuinely make this commitment as London? So how can we as London show it what is possible in genuinely stopping this cycle of food waste and food insecurity?
00:32:00
Speaker
So for me, the big thing I'm excited about is how we do that as a city. I'm a proud Londoner. I love living in London. I love the energy of our city. I love the diversity of our city. I love
00:32:16
Speaker
the fact that you can just see so many different things in so many different bits of London and that different bits of London have such a different look and feel but I think if we as London could become real world leaders in this as a kind compassionate city that is environmentally committed to not wasting food but also genuinely making sure we make sure no Londoner goes hungry that for me is my big vision for
00:32:41
Speaker
How can The Felix Project play its part in us genuinely getting to that as the world's greatest city, really driving being a world leader in this space?
00:32:50
Speaker
Wow, I really love that vision, Charlotte, and the way you articulate it is just so powerful. I was going to ask you what has drawn you to the Felix Project now at this stage of your career, and I think you've sort of just answered that.
Charlotte's Passion and Leadership Goals
00:33:02
Speaker
But tell us a bit more, Charlotte, about your background. I know that throughout your career you have been engaged in causes supporting children and young people. Tell us what's brought you to where you are today.
00:33:12
Speaker
I will always, in lots of my voluntary time, I still support organisations around children and young people. I've always thought though, and this became more apparent in my last job in the I Will campaign, that children and young people, they shouldn't just be thought about in that sector. Actually, young people are
00:33:29
Speaker
a huge part of every single bit of our sector and have a really important contribution to play across them all. So I plan to bring children and young people even more, and they play a big part already, but even more into the Felix Project, as I mentioned. So I don't feel like I'm leaving it behind, but I did definitely quite intentionally want to move into a space where, one, I'm really passionate about sustainability and food poverty. There are two areas that I've always been passionate about, but where I can have a huge amount of learning and growth
00:33:59
Speaker
There are areas I've got so much to learn about. There are areas that I feel like we have very significant challenges as a world. We are not doing all that we need to around environmental sustainability. The world is not where it needs to be. And similarly, we are letting people go hungry. We are not as a world where we need to be on that.
00:34:21
Speaker
I feel really passionate about them and I love the fact that I am learning so much every day in this job. It's the stretch and the learning, but also coming back to the point I was making before, I've always done UK-wide jobs. I've done jobs where I've been focused very much on all four nations and there's something for me around, London's a huge place, but really being able to get my arms around, driving impact in one place,
00:34:50
Speaker
Last year I did a brilliant piece of work on something called Be Well, which was looking about young people's wellbeing in Greater Manchester. And I was so inspired by a big city region. This was Greater Manchester, so all the 10 local authorities are Greater Manchester, all getting behind are being committed to wanting to drive wellbeing. And I think there's something incredibly powerful in place-based change. So how can we really drive this change across London?
00:35:16
Speaker
I've always been interested in place-based change and driving change in a location. And so the opportunity to drive and learn change in the city I love was just too good an opportunity to let pass by. I really love how you describe place-based change and how important it is to really have that local footprint and engagement and connection.
00:35:39
Speaker
But it does strike me, Charlotte, as you have a really powerful model, and has there been any thinking about replicating that model in other locations, perhaps through a franchise, or is it very early days in terms of those discussions?
00:35:53
Speaker
Well, as I said, we are part of the fair share network. So we basically distribute the food for fair share in London. And we have lots of our own suppliers as well, but they supply some of our food. And they have partners in lots of different bits of the country who all do this differently. But there are other models of food redistribution in other bits of the country. So even though Felix is unique, because what we do in London isn't the same as other places, there are people who do this in other places. Now, one of the bits I'm really interested in
00:36:23
Speaker
is there are technological solutions that the Felix Project has worked up and things like the Felix Kitchen that I do feel like we could work with partners in other bits of the country to use in other settings. So I do think there are absolutely ways that we can partner with others. Where we're driving innovation, particularly as I said around technology or with the Felix Kitchen, absolutely one of the things I'd love to do is look at who else
Global Collaboration and Knowledge Exchange
00:36:48
Speaker
is doing this
00:36:48
Speaker
and where can we share and learn. So for example, I've got a call with the Boston Food Group later this week because they're doing some brilliant stuff in Boston around using technology so that it's a much more digitally enabled process. And we're doing a huge amount of that at the Felix Project, but of course we can always learn and share with others. So one of the things I'm really keen on doing is speaking to other people who are doing this in different ways and thinking about how we can collaborate and not reinvent the wheel.
00:37:16
Speaker
And I would encourage you actually, Charlotte, to listen to the episode with Bhavani Shekhawat, who is the CEO of the Akshaya Patra Foundation UK. The Akshaya Patra Foundation is a big foundation in India. They've brought the technology here in terms of kitchens and cooking really nutritious, healthy meals and distributing to schools. And it feels like there may be some synergies there if you haven't already explored that.
00:37:42
Speaker
I will. Oh, this is, you should do some sort of like matchmaking through the charity school, where you say, right, I'm going to match, make all my different. Well, yeah, that's a brilliant, right. I will, I will follow that up. Yes. And if I recall correctly, I think it's episode six. Right. I'll get on it. I'll get on the case.
Embracing Diversity and Flexibility in Work
00:37:59
Speaker
Charlotte, this has been such an enjoyable discussion. And in closing now, do you have any final thoughts or reflections that you would like to share? I mean, what is one thing you would like listeners to take away from this conversation? I mean, beyond just how amazing the Felix Project is, and if you don't know about us, go and have a look, I would definitely say one of my major reflections in coming back to being a chief exec, but also over the last two years, is what sharp focus this has brought into the
00:38:26
Speaker
need for a kind of a flexible approach to working. I have got a two-year-old and a four-year-old, and whether it's when they're home because they're isolating or just the juggle, it is so real. And whatever people's juggle is and might be caring responsibilities, it could be all sorts of different things.
00:38:44
Speaker
I really think that we as a society need to do more to value the skills people develop in all of the other areas of their life. So I've really reflected on the fact that being a working mum means I have developed a huge range of skills around empathy and organization and many, many things, negotiation and
00:39:07
Speaker
I don't think we do enough as a society to really value all of the skills that people who take a break for because of caring or various other things bring to work. And if we can be flexible and allow for those things, we will all benefit as a society. So there's something for me outside of just being a chief exec and driving forward what we do. Yeah, all of us taking a step back and thinking about not just what we do, but how we do it and how we value the contribution that so many different people can make in our organizations.
00:39:35
Speaker
just as something that's really been brought home to me over the last few years being a working mum. But in so many people I speak to at the moment, it is a common theme in so many conversations I have. So that's my parting reflection. Let's all have that in our minds
Season 3 Closure and Gratitude
00:39:51
Speaker
as well. We think about this brave new world and 2022 being an amazing place of opportunity, how we take that forward in the ways we all work.
00:39:59
Speaker
Fantastic. Thank you, Charlotte. That was so inspiring. Thank you so much for being guest on the show for the second time. It's my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.
00:40:11
Speaker
The Felix Project believes in a vision of London when no one goes hungry and good food is never wasted. Despite having been with the organisation for just two weeks, new CEO Charlotte Hill speaks with such passion and a clear aspiration for stopping the cycle of food waste and food insecurity in London, enabling the city to be more sustainable and a genuine world leader in this space. And should we as Londoners achieve this in the next few years, the food rescuers would certainly have done their job.
00:40:40
Speaker
And that's it for season three. Thank you to all of my brilliant guests and look out for more of the Charity CEO podcast later in the year.
00:40:49
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed this latest episode of the Charity CEO podcast. A show that, thanks to you, our listeners, has repeatedly reached the number one spot in Apple's non-profit podcast category. If you found this conversation valuable, please help spread the word. Share or tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram, and make sure you subscribe to the show by clicking the subscribe button on your podcast app.
00:41:11
Speaker
And if you're feeling inspired or uplifted by what you have just heard, please share the joy by leaving us a five-star review. Visit our website, thecharityceo.com, for full show details, information on past season guests, and to submit ideas for future guests. Thanks again to our Season 3 sponsor, Eden Tree, and thank you for continuing to listen.