July 8, 2021

We cooked together as strangers, but we ate together as friends

Ben Pollard, Founder and CEO

We’ve decided not to restart our meal groups, so it’s time to say goodbye and I’d like to try and do it well. 

If you never came to one of our meals, then I’m sorry you didn’t get to join in. If you did, then thank you. You made so much more than food. 

Our meals were never perfect, but they were always beautiful. They were like little windows into the world as it could be. They were joyful, hopeful and delicious. They reminded us of the things we hoped were true. Several thousand warm hearted humans from 8 cities across the UK, gave their time, their money, their love, and their whole selves, to building these joyful communities in a world hungry for every available crumb of hope.

Letting go is hard. Really hard. I spent literally ten thousand hours learning how to design a simple way for strangers to build trust and connection through a shared experience. Now it’s time to put down our potato peelers, and say a fond farewell. Local Welcome has been an amazing adventure, and one I’m so proud and grateful to have been a part of, but like every great adventure, there comes a time for parting. 

In 2015, together with the Syrian community leader Nasser Youssef, I organised groups of Syrian refugees to meet in Starbucks cafes in 12 cities across the UK. Starbucks gave us free coffee, and we invited 20,000 people who wanted to help refugees, but did not know how. Six months later I bought two crepe makers from a hardware store to try making my granny’s drop scone recipe with a Syrian family in Sheffield. With each step of the recipe we answered a simple question and along with the scones, trust and community started to emerge. 

I wanted to learn how to combine the scale of the internet, with the deep democracy of community organising. I had spent years learning how to organise, but I knew almost nothing about the internet, or how to design and build things that are useful for humans, things that might make the world a bit better. 

In 2016, James Darling joined me to try and scale the experiences I knew how to organise, and together we designed the ‘inclusive ritual’ that became our meals. After drop scones in Sheffield, James’s mum suggested we try potato röstis. She was right. It worked. James and Nasser are still trustees, and along the way thousands of leaders and members joined us, supported us, and helped us learn, grow and build diverse communities together. 

It brings a smile to my face thinking of the hundreds of potatoes I grated, the friends I made, the sofas and trains I slept on, the generous hosts, the heart-wrenching and heartwarming stories, the people staying late, arriving early, washing up, or stacking chairs. All of it. It’s all gone. I’m so proud, but I’m also sad. Every time I see the bright blue plastic tupperware grater in my kitchen I feel a bit of sadness, and a lot of pride. 

The sad truth is that, with another wave of Covid on the way, we cannot guarantee that our meals will be safe. Despite the government pronouncing the upcoming end of covid, we still don’t know, or cannot trust, that social restrictions will not return this winter, or even in the months ahead. Even if our meals were safe for our leaders and members, many of the guests we welcomed had only been in the UK for weeks, and sometimes only days. To restart meals safely, we would need to find ways to exclude people without vaccines, or ask people for test results. This might be possible, it might even be insurable, but it would never really live up to the spirit of our vision, or the values we try to live by. 

All this is true, even before we think about the possibility of new Covid variants, or other worse case scenarios, and at the same time, many of our partners who provided venues or invited refugee guests to our meals, have been hit hard by the pandemic. They don’t have the same capacity or priorities as they did in 2019, and if restrictions return, then the safety of people seeking sanctuary, often in cramped accommodation, will be more important than the physical human connections we offered at our meals. 

Kind, generous, and talented people

I’m currently in the process of rebuilding the team, and I’m not ashamed to say that it’s hard. No one is irreplaceable, and no team lasts forever, but I’m incredibly proud of the work we did together, grateful for everything they gave to the organisation, and determined to build on what we learned. Building on a mixture of hunches and hypotheses, we gradually learned when to trust our instincts, trust our ways of working, and truly trust the community leaders who ran our meals. 

What started in a crowded cafe with a diverse group of friends, grew, matured and was nurtured by some of the most talented people I’ll ever work with. Claire Brown, Will Myddleton and Efe Harut have all moved onto new challenges this year, and it’s been hard without them. They each gave themselves fully and wholeheartedly to our vision. Their talents, humour, humility and flair run through everything we built together, and I learnt so much from each of them. 

The last meal we ran was in February 2020, a few weeks before the first Covid lockdown. At that time we were also only six weeks away from running out of money. We had been waiting to hear the result of a grant application to significantly grow our meals, our impact and our membership income. Without the grant, we would have closed the charity and left the whole team unemployed, before furlough had started, and with no way to build on everything we’d learned in the previous 4 years.

Relieved is an understatement. 

When we were finally awarded a new grant by the National Lottery Community Fund we  danced, drank wine, phoned our families, and then danced a bit more. It was all remote. It wasn’t dignified, or cool, but it was certainly joyful. The grant was awarded to help us grow our impact, develop partnerships and keep bringing diverse communities together. We've managed to do all that, but not in the ways we expected or hoped. It’s not been easy, but we’ve stayed true to our vision and values. We’ve told the truth, we’ve taken risks, we’ve tried to think big and act long term, and we’ve tried to stay humble. 

The flexibility and pragmatism of the NLCF allowed us to keep the team together long enough to build on our learning, and adapt our infrastructure to a whole new area of work. None of the work we started during the pandemic, or the impact of our meals would have been possible without some of funders who took risks, and believed in us; particularly to Cassie, Derek, Beth, John, Davinda, Laura and Dan, from NLCF, as well as Charlie, Will, Chris, Jess, Beadie, and Sam. You’ve each kept us going and growing in so many ways, and you’ve taken a risk on me, on us, and on our vision. Thank you. We won’t forget the hard work, dedication and kindness you’ve shown. 

We’ve also been guided and supported by an amazing group of trustees through this time, really held together through 2020 by Nick and Martin, our treasurer and secretary. Last year they were joined by Bekele and we said goodbye to the fabulous Alice and Ella. Then, in December 2019 we recruited three more truly excellent women to our board. They arrived at a more challenging time than any of us expected, even by covid standards, and their support and wisdom during their first six months has been invaluable. Clare, Kylie and Niketa, thank you! 

The road ahead

I had always hoped that the infrastructure we built for our meals would be adaptable to other contexts. It was incredibly hard being forced to test this because of, let alone during, a global pandemic, but thankfully my hope was born out, and against the odds, we managed to adapt our infrastructure to new ways of bringing diverse communities together, at scale, to build their resilience and power for the common good. 

Over the last year we’ve designed a new service called ADHD Together. As I write this, new leaders are running online ADHD peer-support groups based on the infrastructure we built for meals. It’s been an amazing new adventure, and is already having a significant impact, by bringing together diverse groups of people, to support one another in their shared lived experiences.

We wanted to learn how to translate some of the magic of our meals into experiences that could be more scalable, and more resilient in these uncertain times. We also wanted to learn how to lead from our lived experiences, so we started with ADHD support groups because I have ADHD. 

ADHD impacts around 8% of the population, 80% of whom also have a ‘comorbid’ mental health condition, yet only 2% are diagnosed. People with ADHD are significantly more likely than the general population to catch Covid, while women and people of colour are systemically underdiagnosed. It’s been the start of a humbling, stretching, and rewarding new adventure, but it doesn’t take away the sadness of ending our meals. 

Covid has caused many endings, for many of us. We have all missed someone, or something, from the world as it was. Some of us have lost friends and loved ones, many have lost jobs, an education, or simply the freedoms we enjoyed. We have all lost the certainties, however shallow, or false they may have been, of the world we thought we knew. 

These losses are endings, and endings are often painful, but they are also unavoidable. I don’t think I’m alone in this struggle, often preferring to sugar coat, or hold onto things, but when we do this, we strip them of the value they hold. 

Our meals were brimming with value, and they deserve a conscious parting. We may have cooked together as strangers, but we ate together as friends. So, with deep gratitude, I wish you a fond farewell. Even if we do not meet again, go well, stay safe, and please don’t stop welcoming strangers to your tables.