NotJUST (International) CIC is a non profit organisation dedicated to fighting waste and empowering communities. We achieve this by working with businesses all over the UK to collect their redundant / surplus stock for free and repurposing it for our socially driven projects. This includes our food banks, community fridges and freezers, supporting local projects, and discount food stores with supplemental free items to help shoppers retain dignity and food independence. The nature of our project is to respond to needs – whether national or international – and be constantly growing and developing.
NotJUST (International) CIC is the development and amalgamation of projects founder Lea Beven has b
evolved since starting her career as a full-time humanitarian worker in 2015. Lea (but friends call her Daisy) built numerous projects out of repurposing dead stock and empty spaces into charitable enterprises.
In September 2019 Food Share Project began as a home ed project to save the planet. When COVID hit, food manufacturers were left with pallets of perfectly good food they’d have to pay to dispose of. Instead, they donated the food to Daisy. The community centres were forced to close, and Food Share Project was invited to be based in the Woodside, Park Lane Centre, people struggling for food would visit for bags of food and make a donation..
Daisy and her team of volunteers soon realised that the Food Share Project needed a bigger home and rented a unit on Rampart Way in Telford. The project, then inspired by Rogers of Bilston, grew into a discount surplus food store with supplemental freebies, supporting an in-house independent food bank. This discount store was able to support the mammoth task of sourcing and sending 889 pallets of food and aid to Ukraine when the crisis started in 2022.
Fast-forward to 3 years later, and the project expanded to cover 3 locations across the country. Due to everything it encompasses, from food banks to community fridges and freezers to pet food banks to waste prevention to a cafe with homeless outreach, to diversity for dinner to humanitarian work (let me take a breath for a second) we rebranded to NotJUST. Because we are NotJUST one project, we are multiple projects running at the same time. We refined and came ‘home’ during 2024, now based in Halesfield with our Surplus Hub and Madeley, Telford for our community store.
We are NotJUST A Team, but a big old neurospicy family passionate about making the world a better place than we found it. Click here to meet the gang (if you dare).
