Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing’s partnership win award for community impact

Social Impact
Oct. 02, 2026

Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing has won the Corporate Community Local Involvement award at the 2026 Charity Times Awards, recognising a place-based approach that combines immediate access to affordable, nutritious food with longer-term pathways into confidence, skills, education, training and employment.

The award recognises active corporate involvement in a charitable project in its locality, or through partnership with a local UK-registered charity. In this case, it reflects a shared model built around trusted community hubs in England, with support shaped by local needs and informed by the voices and lived experience of the people using it.

The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation has worked with The Bread and Butter Thing since 2021. Over the last five years, the place-based partnership has developed from a six-month pilot into a long-term collaboration. It combines The Bread and Butter Thing’s trusted community network with the Foundation’s funding and independent charitable governance, alongside the practical value enabled by Sodexo’s people, operational expertise, scale, volunteers and supply-chain relationships.

Together, these elements provide immediate food support with dignity while contributing to longer-term social impact: stronger confidence and community connections, and clearer routes into skills, education, training, volunteering and employment.

We are incredibly proud to receive this award with The Bread and Butter Thing. What started as a small pilot has grown into a genuinely integrated, place-based partnership that brings together funding, volunteering, operational expertise, community insight and the strength of Sodexo’s supply chain.
By listening to people in the communities we support, we can shape dignified support around local needs and where it can make the greatest difference.
Together, we are improving access to affordable food while helping people build confidence, develop skills and move towards employment, education and volunteering. This award is wonderful recognition of everyone who has helped turn our shared ambition into lasting local impact.

Camille ThoboisHead of Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation

Through The Bread and Butter Thing’s Empowering Conversations programme funded by the Foundation, 311 women took part in empowerment workshops, the programme also contributed to 26 women moving into paid employment and has enabled 137 to enter education or training. Delivered through trusted local hubs, the programme tailors support to participants’ goals and the opportunities available in each place to support social mobility.

Sodexo has also mobilised people and relationships across its wider business and supply partners to support the redistribution –of 45 tonnes of food, volunteering and community engagement, which alongside funding, local insight and employability support, demonstrates how the partnership’s different contributions reinforce one another.

This award recognises what can be achieved when a charity and corporate partner build their work around the needs and experiences of local communities.
The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation has supported us with much more than funding, opening up expertise, volunteers and supplier relationships that have strengthened our work and extended its impact.
Together, we have developed practical, dignified support that helps people access nutritious food while creating connections and opportunities that can build longer-term resilience.

Vic HarperChief Executive of The Bread and Butter Thing

The partners monitor the collaboration through structured quarterly reviews, combining quantitative reporting with insight from The Bread and Butter Thing’s members. This helps activity respond to peoples lived experience and community priorities, while assessing wider changes in food affordability, wellbeing, confidence and community resilience.

This holistic approach has also supported around 250 families through Healthy voucher activity, contributing to improved diet.

Sodexo is the founding partner of the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation, a UK registered charity. Since 2005 the Foundation has been focused on empowering the most disadvantaged communities across the UK and Ireland to tackle the root causes of food insecurity and poverty. The Foundation supports a number of projects and organisations focused on improving skills, supporting mental health, mentoring, providing education opportunities and building financial literacy and confidence from an early age.

Over the past 10 years, The Bread and Butter Thing has grown from supporting a single community to become the UK’s largest membership based food charity. Establishing a national network of more than 160 community food clubs, reaching over 120,000 households and redistributing the equivalent of 70 million meals. But the true impact goes far beyond food. By providing affordable, nutritious food without referrals or crisis thresholds, they help families stay financially stable before they reach breaking point.

Find out more about the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation

Visit The Bread and Butter Thing website

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FAQs

Food insecurity is when people lack reliable, regular access to enough safe and nutritious food to live a healthy life. It is more than hunger.
Food insecurity also includes uncertainty about where the next meal will come from; limited affordability of food and poor quality or lack of nutrition
People experiencing food insecurity may eat irregularly, rely on cheaper and less nutritious food, or struggle to meet their basic dietary needs over time.
Tackling food insecurity requires addressing its root causes, not just providing food. Food insecurity is shaped by a range of factors, including low or unstable income; housing pressures; health conditions; caring responsibilities and sudden life shocks.
When families struggle to access food, it affects every aspect of their lives — from health and wellbeing to education and employment. Food support is more than emergency aid. It is a critical enabler that relieves immediate financial pressure; restores dignity and control; creates space for people to plan and move forward.
Women’s empowerment is central to tackling food insecurity. Evidence shows that when women have access to resources, they are more likely to invest in their families and communities, helping to create lasting change. By placing women at the heart of its work, the Foundation aims to break the cycle of food insecurity for future generations.
The Stop Hunger Foundation UK & Ireland focuses on long-term, sustainable solutions to food insecurity by supporting grassroots organisations and communities such as The Bread and Butter Thing; tackling the underlying causes of poverty and food insecurity and aligning with UN Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger

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The Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing work together to provide affordable, nutritious food while helping people build the confidence, skills and connections needed to move towards education, training and employment.
Since beginning as a six-month pilot in 2021, the place-based partnership has grown through trusted community hubs, combining charitable funding with Sodexo’s volunteers, operational expertise and supply-chain relationships.
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Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing’s partnership win award for community impact

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FAQs

What is food insecurity?

How can we tackle food insecurity?

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How is the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing partnership helping to tackle food insecurity and improve social mobility?

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How can we tackle food insecurity?

How is the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and The Bread and Butter Thing partnership helping to tackle food insecurity and improve social mobility?