Brief Description

SOFEA is an Oxfordshire-based charity with centres in Didcot and Milton Keynes. Our staff, volunteers, learners and trainees come from a broad range of backgrounds, many having grown up in dysfunctional families, suffering adverse childhood experiences leading to psychological barriers to education and employment. With SOFEA’s support, they develop their personal identity, confidence, self-esteem and purpose. 

As part of the FareShare network, SOFEA distributes over 700 tonnes of good quality surplus food to homeless shelters, refuges, care homes, hospices, breakfast and lunch clubs, community cafes, etc. that, in turn, feed thousands of people each week. 

SOFEA’s Community Larder is a membership programme providing food to vulnerable individuals and families in areas of multiple deprivation. We provide wrap-around services including a café, stay and play sessions for children, clothes-swap, registration for social tariffs for utilities and Social Prescribing Link Worker services.

Vision & Mission

SOFEA’s objects are:
1. The relief of poverty and need in particular by the provision of food;
2. The advancement of education and training and the relief of unemployment in particular by providing training and resources for those seeking work and by working with employers to address recruitment and unemployment issues.
SOFEA’s mission is to design and deliver “Youth-led social impact programmes harnessing untapped value”. 
We support people to make a deep connection with themselves and their community. We treat all members of our community with equal compassion and respect, accepting them as they are and refusing to place any limitation on what they might achieve.
We believe in the restorative benefits of education, coaching, mentoring, work and social justice to support people’s innate resilience to achieve growth and their potential as human beings.

Aims & Activities

Our food redistribution operation provides the main context for education and training. Our young people are involved in a real work environment with a real social impact, carried out to high standards so that SOFEA complies with the law and provides food for those in need.
The need to work in a team, communicate and self-manage are evident and this provides the context in which we address profound behavioural change. The learning environment is sufficiently different from traditional settings that we are able to maintain a prevailing culture of working together for the common good.
SOFEA builds trust and empathy through supportive mentoring and coaching that lead to significant positive changes in a short space of time. Learners and trainees: become openly communicative and willing to discuss their historic problems and issues at home; improve their dress and personal hygiene; adopt positive behaviours; build confidence and ability to express both their frustrations and their wishes.

Facts & Figures

                            Our academic education focusses on GCSE Maths and English. We offer a diploma in Team Leading as a first step towards our employment and apprenticeship programme.
Our practical training includes generic employment skills of self-management, teamwork and communication (identified by the CBI as critical). 
This is done in the context of providing food to those in need, enabling young people to participate in work with real social purpose and to gain a sense of achievement from that work. 
We follow accredited skills programmes with qualifications in personal development, IT, arts award, warehousing and logistics, forklift operations, manual handling, food hygiene, first aid and fire marshalling.
Everyone has an individual programme designed to meet their needs.
We distribute over 700 tonnes of food to community organisations that feed thousands of people each week. We provide food through 48 Community Larders for individuals and families in need, living in areas of multiple deprivation.
                            

                            SOFEA works with and supports staff, volunteers, learners and trainees who come from a broad range of backgrounds, many having grown up in dysfunctional families, suffering adverse childhood experiences leading to psychological barriers to education and employment. With SOFEA’s support, they develop their personal identity, confidence, self-esteem and purpose. 

As part of the FareShare network, SOFEA distributes over 700 tonnes of good quality surplus food to homeless shelters, refuges, care homes, hospices, breakfast and lunch clubs, community cafes, etc. that, in turn, feed thousands of people each week. 

SOFEA’s Community Larder is a membership programme providing food to vulnerable individuals and families in areas of multiple deprivation. We provide wrap-around services including a café, stay and play sessions for children, clothes-swap, registration for social tariffs for utilities and Social Prescribing Link Worker services.
                            

Awards

Grow food capacity by FareShare UK in 2019

Grow capacity in Milton Keynes by Tambour Foundation in 2019

Support mental health programme by Lloyds Foundation in 2019