We're thrilled to welcome our next At The Forefront speaker: Founder of Rethink Food, Nathan Atkinson. Rethink Food are a charity with a mission to create a generation of healthy, food-literate, and environmentally conscious young people.

Founded by two teachers in response to children arriving at school Hungry, they support families and teachers to make healthier choices, reduce food waste and tackle food insecurity. And they're making a big impact.

In 2024 alone Rethink Food supplied over 500 tonnes of surplus food, creating more than 900,000 meals for families, schools and communities. In fact, their work has now grown into a nationwide movement. They now partner with schools all over the UK to deliver cutting-edge programmes that inspire young people to rethink their relationship with food and the planet.

Listen in to hear how they're taking the food crisis by the scruff of the neck and transforming lives through food security and education.

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If you love food and community this one's for you. Modern industrial farming is broken. It’s harming the planet, driving food insecurity and breaking down communities.

Our At The Forefront guest this month is proving there’s a better way. Abel Pearson is the founder of Glasbren, a Wales based organisation that are showing smaller scale, sustainable farms led by local communities can address both local and global challenges while promoting mental and physical health.

Mary Rose Gunn sat down with Abel to explore Glasbren’s vision for future farming and uncover the challenges small-scale farms and communities are facing.

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The crisis in the mental health of girls and young women in the UK is escalating, with a recent Girls Guide report finding that girls are more unhappy now than they have ever been. The lack of early intervention support means low self-esteem is allowed to develop unchecked.

In this At The Forefront, Mary Rose speaks to Char Bevan, founder and CEO of girls' mental health charity Flourish. As a youth support worker Char wasn’t willing to accept the despondent attitude that girls' mental health was 'just how it is' she found amongst many of her colleagues. And so, Flourish was born.

As the only girl-focused specialists working on early intervention, Flourish is a unique and ground-breaking organisation in Warwickshire.

By offering one-to-one and group mentoring programmes, Flourish are helping girls to tackle the issues that are holding them back. They create a space for girls to look at challenges, create solutions and reach their potential.

The results speak for themselves.

Since its creation in 2014, Flourish have helped over 1,000 girls aged 11-18 with an incredible 86% reporting improvement in their well-being and 82% seeing an improvement in the self-esteem as a direct result of Flourish.

Watch now to find out what Char thinks are the biggest challenges to girls, and how we can make a difference to the girls and women in our lives.

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