soup

Can soup change the world?

Jessica genuinely stumbled across this article at lunchtime. We have been doing lots of work with Village SOS to train mentors to support communities taking more responsibility for doing things in their own neighbourhood. I think this is a brilliant and inspirational way to get locals to work together through the medium of some warm comfort food. The story tells us:

Colchester is a relatively affluent UK town. So why is it borrowing a micro-funding idea from a US city that went bankrupt?

Soup is rarely thought of as particularly inspiring. But that’s the case for a fledgling few in the small Essex town – Detroit Soup to be precise.

It’s a socially-focused crowdfunding project, in which members of the community pay a small entry fee in return for a bowl of soup – and the right to vote on one of a few local causes pitching to win the prize fund, which is the sum of the entry money.

At this Colchester event, the voters decided to buy a new kiln for a daycare centre for disabled people using the £191.52 prize fund (the combined £5 entry fees plus someone’s £1.52 donation) from the second ever Colchestersoup