The Innocence of Childhood

The last few days have been a roller coaster of emotions, despair leading to optimism and back again, sometimes in the blink of an eye.

And then I heard a story. And a true one at that. A story that made me smile and made me cry all at the same time. Perhaps a story of naivety, of immature innocence but still one that warmed the cockles.

Many of you will be aware of Skipchen, and many of you will have seen Sam or one of his colleagues talking passionately about their Pay As You Like restaurants that are popping up UK wide, feeding people with food that would otherwise have gone to landfill, and asking people to pay what they'd like, or what they can, for the food. Any way, Sam spoke at an event I was at last night and here's the story he shared........

Bristol has a reasonably affluent area called Henleaze, which has the city's only full sized Waitrose, who regularly throw food into skips that go to landfill. There had obviously been some conversation around food waste at school, and Skipchen had obviously been discussed. So 25 children, as only children could do, wrote to the manager of Waitrose and asked him to give his food that normally went into the skip, to Skipchen.

And he agreed!!!

There's a lesson to be learnt here. If a child says to you, but that doesn't make sense, listen to them. Ask them why. Enter into a meaningful discussion with them without using any adult rhetoric or economic figures. Just listen. 

Food that goes into skips to go to landfill?

Beans being brought from desert areas in Africa? 

Cutting down trees on our most fertile soil?

I could go on but you get my point. 

And we'll done Sam and the Skipchen crew. You're awesome. As are all the other organisations out there putting food into mouths rather than bins and shouting about food waste and the horrors of it.