Scots politician quits to set up local food charity after seeing poverty soar

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A former politician has told how she threw off the shackles of party politics and cut the crime rate in her area.Angela Moohan was a Labour councillor on West Lothian Council for five years but felt constrained by what she was able to do to bring about social change.Instead, she stepped down and used a social enterprise to “fight poverty and hunger with dignity”.Angela created The Larder in 2010 to provide food support, training and fair work opportunities to help local people “transition from surviving to thriving”.But through the charity’s Youth Justice Programme, she has tackled a real anti-social behaviour issue.

Two years ago, just after she quit politics to work for The Larder full time, her Programme team became aware of 12 boys from the Fauldhouse area, aged between 14 and 20, who had been largely absent from school, were constantly in trouble with the police and were banned from every community facility and local shops.

They would fight in the street, damage public property, attack buses and Scottish Fire and Rescue teams as they were responding to fires they had set.The Larder and partners intervened in July 2023.Angela said: “Where the boys went, we went.

If the boys went into the wood, some of the team would go too, and they kept doing this, evenings and weekends, until they began to form a bond. “Once that bond had been forged, as delicate as it was, they encouraged and supported the boys to set up their own group in the Larder’s training centre, so they could talk about what they wanted to do with their lives in a safe space.” The boys had experienced a variety of complex conditions or backgrounds but with the Larder’s support, and that of the Forestry Commission, the Fire Service, the Police and local