Supporting Dartmoor Community Kitchen Hub

sankalpa, along with a number of other funders, supported this project from conception to delivery, providing grant funding for initial research and support towards a pilot study. 

The findings from the pilot formed the concept for a scalable community kitchen hub model. The hub model involves training people with learning difficulties in cooking skills and working to addresses social isolation through food sharing in rural communities, nationwide.

Dartmoor Community Kitchen Hub Today

Supported by a growing volunteer team, Dartmoor Community Kitchen Hub has established links with multiple care providers throughout the region. At present the team supply 500+ meals per month to Devon residents and have also linked with Somerset Local Food Hub, who are now delivering DCKH meals to their customers. DCKH is on track to double their supply of meals, expanding to reach other isolated groups including young carers and families who are dependant on food banks.

The team have recently partnered with the University of Exeter to undertake a detailed two part study into the effect of diet on mental and physical health in older people. The first study of its kind, researchers plan to monitor both the financial and physical effects experienced by both older people receiving care and of those providing a care service.

Throughout the pandemic, the hub has helped growing numbers of local people in food poverty, and has witnessed first-hand the growing phenomenon of the “newly hungry” in which previously relatively comfortably off families have been forced to resort to food banks and the benefit system to survive.