Fellow's Profile
Ema Wilkes
Fellow's Profile
Ema Wilkes
Pantry to Power: Scaling community-led food, health and youth leadership
Fellowship
- Themes
- Focus
-
Strengthening communities through sustainable food and social action models
- Countries
- Fellowship year
-
2026
- Supported by
- Locality
-
North West
Biography
I am the CEO and Founder of Neo Community, a community-led charity in Wirral that works alongside local people to tackle poverty, improve wellbeing and create opportunities for lasting change. My Fellowship focuses on the future of community food systems and how we can move beyond emergency food aid to build greater dignity, resilience and local power.
For more than a decade, I have worked with families experiencing food insecurity, financial hardship and social isolation. While food banks and food aid play a vital role in supporting people through crisis, I am passionate about exploring how communities can create long-term solutions that reduce reliance on emergency support and give people greater choice, connection and control over their lives.
Through my Fellowship, 'From Pantry to Power', I will visit organisations across Europe to learn from innovative approaches to community food provision, social supermarkets, food justice and citizen-led action. I want to understand how communities can use food as a starting point for wider social change. By sharing my learning, I hope to influence practice across the UK, strengthen Neo Community's work and inspire a growing movement of communities that use food not simply to feed people in times of hardship, but as a catalyst for dignity, belonging, local leadership and lasting social change.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
Disclaimer
All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.
