30 August 2023. For the August edition of Food with Friends, we welcomed back our international friends inside a grade 2 listed building in Old Portsmouth to experience a British picnic with an ethnic twist. Guests enjoyed an array of sweet and savoury treats, after a talk on liver health wonderfully delivered by Dr Kate Owen-Glynn from Southampton University and NHS England.
In 2022, WBI started Food with Friends for the winter months with a Portsmouth City Council grant. We are doing this as a non-profit company to pilot how the private sector, especially SMEs that are steeped in the community, can lead in reducing health inequalities, see here.
It has been a month since our last event in July, and we were thrilled to host our favourite educational meal gathering funded by the National Lottery Community Fund.
Each Food with Friends event is underpinned by a health topic, as one of the objectives of this project is to expand public health outreach to the marginalised in our community. Our goal is to increase awareness on vital health topics and resources on wellbeing in a friendly and accessible manner. 
We are grateful to Dr Kate Owen-Glynn for the empathetic delivery of her presentation, beautifully made with engaging visuals and ample opportunity for Q&A. The room was buzzing with follow-up questions from the participants.
It was rewarding to see the high interest displayed in this topic by our guests. The Q&A discussion was facilitated thanks to our talented interpreters, also asylum-seeker themselves, who skillfully switched between English, Arabic and Spanish.
We are grateful to our two volunteer interpreters Abdalazeez Saleh and Fatima Rodrigues, ensuring a smooth understanding between participants and our speaker.
Considering the stigma around liver disease due to its association with alcohol, Dr Kate Owen-Glynn’s and her colleague Sara Knott‘s visit was important to raise awareness on the real complexity of the issue and highlight further resources.
NHS public health education in the time of increasing demand for medical services is often a life-saver.
We also received another special visit from social counsellor Raushia Coles, who introduced participants to The YOU Trust – a local counselling service based in Portsmouth, dedicated to adult support Portsmouth on a number of issues: from coping with trauma to financial debt and confidence-building.
After the lovely introductions and talks from our guests, it was time to tuck in.
Our guests were treated to some British picnic classics such as cucumber sandwiches, sausage rolls and quiche along with summer fruit salad.
The British picnic menu including Victoria sponge and scones with jam complimented dishes from Southern Asian cuisine: onion bhajis and coriander egg fried pasta. Sourced locally from an independent caterer, this menu showed the surprising and rich combinations that can arise from cultural exchange.
The August edition of Food with Friends was the perfect end to summer: happy memories of a picnic basket and a taste for learning to take with us into the next Autumn Term.
With gratitude to the hard work done by Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust with Shipa Ahmed Khan and team for public health education. See you next time! 
