Oxford Mutual Aid is a grassroots network, and was established, like many similar groups at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their practices are rooted in Mutual Aid principles - that only when we share and redistribute, and support each other, will everyone in our community have access to the resources they need. The food bank is a 7 days per week operation, almost entirely run my volunteers, redistributing food to people who are struggling across Oxford.

Last week OMA delivered food parcels to 670 people in 238 households, including 390 adults, 210 children and 70 babies. These are people who receive food support from the food bank every week. In addition to the regular deliveries they also provided 22 food parcels to people experiencing homelessness rehoused at the YHA Oxford, and supported approximately 30 households through their work with the Syrian Sisters and Oxford Asian Women’s Voice.

Requests for emergency help with food continue to be worryingly high. 105 Emergency food parcels were supplied to 258 people between Monday and Sunday last week.

Our regular Wednesday shift has been a little quieter for parcel packing in the last couple of weeks thanks to some reorganisation of delivery routes. We'll enjoy the relative calm while we can as OMA will soon move people off the waiting list and so our parcel packing list will be growing again. In the meantime it's an excellent opportunity to use the time we have left after finishing the food parcels to do jobs which are usually hard to find time for: packing bags of nappies, portioning out tea, cleaning, reorganising the fridges, stocking the shelves and unpacking deliveries.

Good to meet you Adam and Maria!

Great work again team.