In this episode, Nathan Atkinson, Co-Founder of Rethink Food in the UK, shares a deeply grounded perspective on hunger, education and systemic change, shaped by a decade spent leading schools in some of England’s most disadvantaged communities.

Nathan traces the origins of Rethink Food back to a defining moment as a headteacher, when a school kitchen breakdown revealed the hidden scale of child hunger and its direct impact on behaviour, wellbeing and learning. That experience led him to a simple but powerful commitment: to remove hunger as a barrier to education.

The conversation explores how Rethink Food has evolved from grassroots action into a nationally recognised organisation working across three pillars of impact: access to healthy food, skills and stewardship, and systems change. At the centre of this work is the National School Pantry Network, a flagship programme supporting schools to become trusted, community anchored hubs where families can access healthy food without stigma, alongside wider support services.

Nathan explains why food is both the entry point and the connector. Sharing food builds trust, which then enables schools to link families to help with debt, housing, digital access, employment and education. The aim is not only to respond to crisis, but to break the cycle of food insecurity altogether.

A significant part of the discussion focuses on nutrition, dignity and choice. Nathan challenges simplistic narratives about poverty and food, highlighting structural barriers such as transport, infrastructure and access to healthy options.

Listeners will gain insight into how the organisation operates day to day, from surplus food logistics and volunteer mobilisation to digital education programmes and cross sector partnerships with corporates, planners and policymakers. Nathan reflects on the importance of collaboration over confrontation, and why working with unlikely allies can unlock long term change.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.

Larry Cooley joins us to explore how to achieve sustainable impact at meaningful scale.

As co-founder of the Scaling Community of Practice, Larry has spent more than two decades examining why promising innovations so often fail to reach the scale required to address global problems. Drawing on 50 years of experience, from his early work as a Peace Corps volunteer to senior roles advising governments, foundations and multilateral institutions, he offers a candid assessment of what is and is not working.

At the centre of the conversation is a shift in thinking. Larry distinguishes between transactional scaling, which focuses on expanding projects, and transformational scaling, which seeks to embed change within the systems that deliver services at scale. Projects matter, he argues, but only insofar as they serve as vehicles for systemic change. Without attention to the institutions, incentives and delivery mechanisms that sustain impact over time, even the most effective pilot will struggle to move beyond proof of concept.

A key theme is the sobering reality that most successful pilots do not scale. Estimates suggest that between 70 and 95 per cent fail to achieve broad, sustained uptake. This is rarely due to weak ideas. Rather, the barriers lie in the pathway from innovation to institutionalisation. The assumption that another actor will step in to take a proven model to scale has often proved misplaced.

Larry describes the work of the Scaling Community of Practice, now a global network of 5,000 members across more than 120 countries, convening practitioners, funders and policymakers to share lessons and develop practical guidance. The community has recently completed 28 case studies examining how different types of funders approach the question of scale.

These studies highlight eight core elements required for transformational scale and examine how internal policies, incentives and funding models either enable or hinder progress.

Visit our Knowledge Hub at Lidji.org for information on 350+ case studies and interviews with remarkable leaders in philanthropy, sustainability and social entrepreneurship.