The Community
Wellbeing Index
We see the CWI as an essential part of our research toolkit to help better understand how to more efficiently and accurately target and evolve our social and environmental activities
Liam Sweeney, Creative Partner at Hubbub
We are a UK-wide charity that focuses on promoting ways of living which are sustainable and have a positive impact on the environment. Since 2014, we have partnered with over 1,000 different organisations, focusing on a range of environmental issues.
One of our key activities has revolved around the creation of community fridges, which provide a space in which surplus food can be shared. The fridges are accessible to anyone and have been designed to cut food waste and make fresh food available to communities around the UK. We also offer free support to groups which enables them to set up their own community fridge, guiding them through the full creation process.
We recently partnered with the Co-op to fast-track the growth of our community fridges. The partnership will see our community fridge network grow over the next year, from 150 to 250 community fridges across the UK, saving an additional 6.8 million meals per year from going to waste.
When developing our strategy for the Community Fridge Network, we wanted to use a data-led approach to ensure that we prioritised funding, support and resources across UK communities where the biggest benefit would be felt. Maximising our environmental and social impact to drive positive change is central to the way we work at Hubbub, and using the Community Wellbeing Index (CWI) allowed us not only to inform better decision making, but more importantly it provided a UK-wide, neighbourhood level source of data to better connect us with - and understand - the communities served by our work. This ensured that we could fully assess the context of prospective fridge sites, particularly drawing on metrics related to economy, health, social relations and equality.
Armed with insightful information on what’s important to local communities, the CWI is already helping us think about where we should take our community work next; we see the CWI as an essential part of our research toolkit to help better understand how to more efficiently and accurately target and evolve our social and environmental activities.
By Liam Sweeney, Creative Partner at Hubbub
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We care about the wellbeing of our local communities, which is why we are applying a few changes to our postcode search for you to find your local wellbeing score.
You can still find out about the great work involved throughout the Community Wellbeing Index on site.