SOFEA

Story of Self

Sofea began almost unintentionally. As a deputy headteacher in a local secondary school, I fell in love with education but out of love with schools. In that role I found I couldn’t implement the changes I wanted to see. My wife Ruth and I met as teachers in Leeds. We adopted three children who struggled in mainstream education. This led us to develop alternative provision for young people disengaged from school.

Kas and Anne-Marie joined us shortly after, and the four of us began providing alternative education for young people aged 16 and over. We focused on therapeutic, pastoral, and employability support.

A pivotal moment came when we partnered with FareShare, an organisation specialising in surplus food redistribution. In 2013, we established a warehouse operation where young people could learn valuable skills. This became the foundation for our education and employability programs while also addressing a critical social need.

COVID-19 shifted our focus from education and employability alone to community wealth-building. While we couldn’t provide enough food for a week’s meals, even small contributions reduced stress and brought people together through community larders and other initiatives. Since 2022, we’ve worked to balance our food distribution efforts, community larders, and the support we offer young people.

We launched SOFEA based on an Australian model, becoming one of the first Charitable Incorporated Organisations (CIOs) in the UK. A volunteer solicitor helped us create our constitution, but the process caused issues with the bank, as they categorised us under community group accounts. Navigating this bureaucratic loop has felt Kafkaesque.

I stepped down as a trustee to focus on working within SOFEA. Bernard Grenville-Jones brought invaluable governance expertise, and we built a strong board around him. In the beginning, the risk—both financial and professional—was significant. Running a warehouse, maintaining vehicles, and managing other expenses was always going to be expensive.

Our approach was driven by a deep-seated belief in the importance of our work, a "bloody-mindedness" to overcome obstacles. We embraced a culture of learning and experimentation, constantly adapting and improving our programs.

In June 2024, we achieved a significant milestone, surpassing £3 million in turnover for the first time. We now employ 80 staff, including 30 young people who have progressed through our learning programs, and operate two sites in Didcot and Milton Keynes.

Story of Us

Our mission focuses on empowering young people. We collaborate with 35 community larder partners, homeless hostels, schools, and other organisations to distribute surplus food.

FareShare is a crucial partner, providing a framework for our operations and valuable funding support. In November 2023 we were honoured to host the King and Queen at our facility as part of the Coronation Food Project, further enhancing our regional reach.

We work closely with educational institutions like Activate Learning and Milton Keynes College, providing valuable skills training to their students.

Our funding sources include trusts, foundations, and corporate partners. We actively engage with local employers to promote inclusive employment opportunities.

We’ve helped introduce employability and education programs to other centers across the UK. Most funding for these programs comes from Activate Learning and Milton Keynes College, as they recognise the community impact we provide.

We also receive funding and support from trusts, foundations, and corporate partners. Many corporate volunteers who work with us form lasting relationships that sometimes lead to additional support.

We engage with local employers to promote inclusive employment and have built strong connections with South and Vale councils, OxLEP, and Oxford City Council. However, we don’t plan to take contracts from local authorities.

When we started, I wasn’t aware of all the support organisations out there, but groups like the Oxfordshire Community Foundation (OCF) were invaluable in the early days. Now, we’re members of various networks, including the Didcot Power Fund and Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership (OIEP).

Story of now: calls to action 

Measuring Impact
It’s incredibly difficult to measure impact effectively. We can report on how many units of food we’ve processed or how many people we’ve worked with, but that doesn’t capture the real change we’ve made in people’s lives. I know we’ve transformed the lives of many young people, particularly those leaving care or recovering from trauma.

We need to develop better questions to assess our impact, moving beyond activity and output reports. 

Joining Up – place based approaches

‍I’m particularly interested in cross-sector working at a place-based level, bringing together schools, health services, the police, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and the voluntary sector to address issues collectively. Collaboration remains one of the biggest challenges. Oxfordshire has so much positive activity, but this often creates a competitive environment rather than a collaborative one or a confusing one for would-be beneficiaries and service users. Communities like Didcot, with a population of around 40,000, are ideal for these efforts. However the bigger institutions often don’t talk to each other and there are so many small organisation doing similar things .

We need to develop place-based approaches, fostering partnerships between schools, health services, police, and other agencies within specific communities and better mapping of who does what more joined up working 

Funding and Collaboration (and banking!)

The funding system doesn’t encourage collaboration. When applying for grants on tight deadlines, there’s no time to involve partners—it’s all about meeting the application deadline.

We need funding models that incentivise and give time for collaborative approaches. We also need easier access to banking services for community businesses.

Understanding Complexity Community Wealth Building

Community wealth-building is multifaceted. Funders often struggle to understand organisations like ours that run multiple programs and interventions. However, communities thrive on these approaches. 

We need funders and anchor institutions to support preventative, multi-faceted work.

Accountability and Prevention

Prevention is rarely prioritised because it’s hard to measure. If demand for GP services increases, the typical response is to build more surgeries, rather than address the root causes to reduce demand. Recently, I attended a school disciplinary panel where a young girl was being failed by traditional solutions. The response was to keep applying the same ineffective measures that hadn’t worked for 13 years.

Public bodies need to look beyond short-term accountability measures and targets  and support organisations that take innovative, multifaceted approaches to address complex challenges.

‍