From Food to Futures

From Food to Futures

Youth Scotland case studies are a chance to share stories that bring community-based youth work to life. They highlight the energy, resilience and creativity of our members, and demonstrate the many ways our membership provides support beyond insurance or the PVG scheme. Touch of Love, based in Tory, Aberdeen, is one such story: a grassroots response that has become a nationally recognised youth organisation in just a few short years. We caught up with Dr. Jane Akadiri and Augustina Ezea from Touch of Love to talk past, present and future.

From a Simple Act to a Food Bank

Touch of Love began with a simple request, just before the COVID-19 lockdown. As Jane recalls:

What began with meals in a church hall soon became food parcels, supported by volunteers from the local community:

‘We just started making warm meals. And then it was just more of “come, eat”. Then we had some groceries. Pick up what you need […] and then we moved over to distributing food parcels which was again one of community led volunteers; you know how it was during COVID, everyone was in to help.’

This became the foundation of Touch of Love’s food bank, which has since expanded to three communities while keeping a strong base in Tory.

To the Top of the List

At the end of the pandemic, Touch of Love asked its food bank users what they would spend money on if they could. Jane explains:

‘We had about 90 respondents and it was more of people working to spend money on food, on electricity, on, you know, bills […] things about young people was kind of very much at the bottom of the list.’

This insight sparked the creation of a youth group: a safe, free space where children and young people could take part in a variety of activities.

‘We thought, OK, then we can set up something for the young people where they can just come in […] such that the young people feel that this is a safe space for them – and they come in and take ownership of it.’

Today, Touch of Love runs groups for ages 8–12, 12–15 and 16–21, with more than 500 young people taking part.

A Safe Space, a Growing Community

The group quickly became more than a local project.

What began as a neighbourhood project grew into a citywide service. Young people now travel from across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire, taking part in football, creative arts, and youth-led projects.

‘Even Aberdeenshire, young people from Portlethen, a good number of them coming to Tory to every Friday to join us. So we now have a community football where young people, ethnic minority young persons have, like they play with the Tory residents. It is just everyday growing with arms and legs.’

A Connection with Youth Scotland

The connection with Youth Scotland began in 2022, when Touch of Love applied for summer programme funding and were asked if they belonged to a professional organisation.

Membership quickly proved invaluable:

‘Everything we’ve done with Youth Scotland is just we going on the website […] looking through the pages and looking and saying, oh, we didn’t know. There’s this one here […] The resources are there, you know the reports are there.

I think the website is very, very user friendly, very easy to navigate. We’ve been working with Youth Scotland since we became members and we’ve been very active. Even our Ready for Youth Work. We had Josh come down, spend two days to train our volunteers.’

Youth Scotland membership provides access to training, youth awards, leadership programmes and support for groups of all sizes. For members like Touch of Love, these resources are designed to reduce administrative burden and strengthen quality youth work.

A Season of Success

In just a few years, Touch of Love has been recognised nationally. They were finalists at the SCVO Scottish Charity Awards, including winning the People’s Choice Award, alongside success at the National Youth Work Awards, with Jane winning the Inspirational Leader award.

Jane says: ‘We got that e-mail about being one of the finalists. It was like, wow, because they had over 500 applications […] even if we don’t, in fact we’re not expecting winning anything. We just thought being a finalist was enough. […] So you can then imagine our shock when we got called. First of all, the People’s Choice Awards […] that was a very, very big shock.’

The recognition went further still when Jane herself received an honorary doctorate from Robert Gordon University. As she put it:

‘It was just like a season of success.’

Challenges of Community Youth Work

Despite their growth, challenges remain.

Volunteer retention is another pressure:

‘You might have a very fantastic youth worker, but maybe 4-5 months over down the line the person gets a job in Edinburgh, moves out of Aberdeen […] So you won’t retain that person, and the fact that you don’t have that person means that what makes the uniqueness that the person brings to youth work disappears from the team.’

The group also welcomed the reversal of proposed PVG fees, which would have cost them nearly £900:

‘In fact, we were actually jumping the day we saw that [Youth Scotland] e-mail about the win. I was like, in fact, we were particularly excited because we’re going to be spending over £800 to £900 to get the PVGs running for our for our youth workers.’

Building Confidence and Community

With recognition has come responsibility.

‘The whole successes have kind of reinforced our confidence […] So we are also going back looking at all our processes looking at the procedures looking at the policies – what can be improved.’

Jane’s advice for other groups is simple:

‘If we had known about Youth Scotland would have joined first, you know […] because when we started, we had to build a lot of things from the scratch […] but the moment we register, we use Scotland. We saw that all these resources were built, you know, just download […] you can imagine the number of months we spent trying to research on Google.’

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From a single act of kindness before the pandemic to becoming an award-winning youth organisation, Touch of Love embodies the impact of community-based youth work. Their story demonstrates how vision, persistence and the right support can transform lives — and how Youth Scotland’s membership helps groups achieve more than they ever imagined.

Thank you to Dr. Jane Akadiri and Augustina Ezea for telling the story of Touch of Love