The Rainbow Muslim Women’s Group were awarded £5000 in 2022 as part of the Falkirk Food Futures fund. They specified that this grant was used for a project empowering their community to make sustainable, healthy food choices, and to give the wider community an opportunity to come together in a social setting to share food and make connections.
The Rainbow Muslim Women’s Group is a Falkirk-based SCIO that provides social and educational opportunities to women from ethnic minority backgrounds. Their activities are varied, but always with a focus on helping others. The group were delighted to be awarded £5000 from the Falkirk Food Futures fund as administered by Forth Environment Link in 2022.
The grant went towards a project titled “Nutritious and Sustainable Food for All”. With this fund, Rainbow Muslim Women’s Group were able to provide a benefit to more than 170 people, including youths, children, and mothers, among others.
Rainbow Muslim Women’s Group are dedicated to empowering their community to make healthy and sustainable choices around food, and to improve dignified access to nutritious, sustainable, acceptable and affordable food with this project. They hoped to improve knowledge and access in the long-term, and were happy to have made a big impact.
A range of activity was made possible due to the grant. In total, it stretched to: 12 cooking classes; three educational workshops; three food festivals; and one trip to St Andrews beach.
Many of the people who came together included people from ethnic minority communities, refugees, asylum seekers and low-income families. Bringing people together to cook, share food, and socialise gave them the opportunity to meet other people and to take part in something bigger than themselves, a vitally empowering act.
Healthy eating and sustainable food is at the heart of happy communities, and Rainbow Muslim Women’s Group was keen to help members and residents of the wider area have exposure to food of all different kinds. Through the activities and events of the summer, they met the group’s own stated aims of promoting education and leisure activities, as well as improving the health and wellbeing of their members.
The cooking sessions were very popular, and took place across lots of different locations in the greater Falkirk area. This gave members the opportunity to see more of the district’s impressive spaces, as well as making the group visible to the wider communities.
Sessions took place in the Westfield Community Centre, Dalgrain Community Hall, and Thornhill Community Centre. The group also had an outing to Jupiter Urban Wildlife Centre, an impressive project that turned an old industrial wasteland into a thriving space for wildlife over the course of the last 30+ years.
Rainbow Group also used this project as an opportunity to signpost to useful information available on digital platforms, such as websites and apps. These will help their attendees make better food choices overall.
They were also delighted to welcome children during the school holidays, and having this young energy around was like a breath of fresh air for the older members, too!
With the £5000 provided by Falkirk Food Futures, Rainbow Group have made a real difference to their community. They created a series of fun events and activities that gave their community the opportunity to socialise and make connections in their local area, as well as learn about sustainable, nutritious food.