Our strategic goals
To create change, we’re prioritising three areas of work: changing communities, changing policy, and changing minds.
Why these three areas?
From our strategy development work, we believe these three areas interlink together and support one another to create lasting change. The three areas we’re focusing on are like hands (communities), head (policy) and heart (minds). All three are connected but require different skills, actions and approaches. But if the head and heart are disconnected or the hands and head are not collaborating, we’ll be far less effective.
In short, we think that in order to reduce the need for food banks, we need to generate change at person-to-person, social and policy levels for this transformation to last:
Changing communities
We will work with food banks to reduce the need for their services locally
The food banks in our network are at the forefront of the fight against poverty. The compassion, resilience and drive they demonstrate daily has enabled them to build strong links and relationships locally. We want to help unlock even more of the potential of food banks to become places of transformation where the underlying drivers of food bank use are addressed. We’ll help food banks to develop strategic plans to reduce need locally and create initiatives that can help their communities further like working on projects that support people to increase their income. We’ll also provide the tools volunteers need to engage in new areas of work.
Changing policy
We will drive policy changes that tackle the drivers of food bank use
We know that government decisions can have a huge impact on people in poverty. Working with the food banks in our network, we gather data, which helps us to see behind the numbers of food bank parcels. We can see what is driving up the figures at such an alarming rate. Together with partners, including food banks and people with lived experience of poverty, we’ll work to change policy through this evidence gathered at all levels of government to eradicate destitution across the UK. To meet the challenge of ending the need for food banks, we’ll be working closely with other anti-poverty organisations to suggest policies which will stop people from reaching crisis point in the first place.
Changing minds
We will increase public understanding and empathy, and inspire action
There is no greater insight and understanding of what poverty and hunger are really like than what you’ll find at any of the 1,200 food bank centres in the Trussell Trust network. They are often highlighted in the media to offer a glimpse into local and national levels of acute poverty and community generosity. Their awareness and passion are a vital tool in achieving our goal, so over the next five years, we’ll be building on this momentum to increase the understanding of poverty and what leads people in our communities to food banks. We’ll be building a movement of people who share our values and are willing to act and create a just and compassionate society, finding better long-term solutions to acute poverty.
How our strategy fits together
If you’d like to discover more about how our strategy fits together, we’ve developed this handy diagram to show how we believe our values, who we work with and what we do all lead to shorter and longer-term changes. Often, this is called ‘a Theory of Change’, and you can download it here.
