Letter 19 — To Rainbow Junktion

When neighbourhood care becomes civic infrastructure

Context

The fifth letter of Week 3 of One Letter a Day turns to Rainbow Junktion, the pay-as-you-feel community café and food-share based at All Hallows Church in Leeds.

Though its mission is rooted in tackling food poverty and social exclusion rather than climate policy, its work stands precisely where the social and environmental crises meet.

By intercepting food waste, offering dignified hospitality, and creating a space where everyone is welcome, Rainbow Junktion shows how resilience is built not through grand strategies but through daily acts of care.

This letter asks how such neighbourhood initiatives might be recognised as vital civic infrastructure in the broader transition to a fairer, more resilient city.

Letter

Dear Rainbow Junktion team,

I am writing as part of One Letter a Day: a year-long civic experiment to restore public attention and moral imagination around the climate crisis, starting here in Leeds. Each day I write to someone whose work shapes how we live through this transition, and publish both letters and replies to invite wider dialogue.

This week turns to the neighbourhood organisations that make resilience tangible: the places where community becomes infrastructure against social and environmental shocks. Rainbow Junktion has long been one of them. By turning surplus food into welcome and connection, you’ve built more than a café; you’ve built trust, routine and dignity into everyday life.

Your priority may not be climate itself, yet the crises are inseparable. Until we build fairer, more inclusive systems, the climate emergency will continue to deepen the very inequalities you confront daily in food, but also energy, housing and migration. And the reverse is true: every act that reduces exclusion strengthens our collective capacity to face what’s coming.

In that sense, the work you do already functions as infrastructure. Not of steel or concrete, but of care, belonging and civic resilience. It feeds bodies, yes, but also the solidarity without which no transition can hold.

So my question is this:

From your experience, what would it take for neighbourhood initiatives like yours to be recognised and supported as essential civic infrastructure – not temporary stopgaps, but durable foundations for a fairer, more resilient city? And what would help others follow your lead?

I ask because much of the climate response still happens at a distance: in documents and strategies. Yet the future is already being quietly rehearsed in spaces like yours, where hospitality becomes resistance to despair. Understanding how to sustain that work and how to help it multiply feels central to the transition ahead.

With gratitude for your constancy and the hope you serve daily,

Vivien Badaut

Founder, One Letter a Day

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Tomorrow’s letter continues Week 3’s focus on civic infrastructure, turning to Lucy Meredith of Leeds Community Energy — exploring how Leeds can build the civic layer that links neighbourhood action with the city’s wider energy transition.