We hope you all either enjoyed the snow or are now enjoying the absence of it! Throughout the week OMA has continued to support 199 households with regular food parcels, and also provided over 72 emergency parcels.
Solidarity with Migrants
The UK government is yet again attempting to create more boundaries that aim to discriminate and separate. The hostility of the government towards migrants is at odds with our principles of inclusion, solidarity, love and community. As a Mutual Aid group, we would like to take a stance of solidarity against any policy that inhibits our capacity for inclusion, and stand with those who give voices to the suppressed.
Please check out ways to support and get involved:
Lesbians and Gays Support Migrants on Instagram
Migrants Organise on Instagram
Calais Food Collective on Instagram
Thank you to the Blue Cross in Burford
We have been supported by the Blue Cross in Burford in fortnightly donations of pet food for several months now. This kindness has transformed the support we can give to those with pets and has spread much practical help and joy to those in acute crisis. We have recently been featured through them in the Oxford Mail. Do check it out!
Sourcing for Ramadan
The wonderful Ramadan team are in full-flow and sourcing across the city and beyond for food and funds so we can give beautiful gift parcels both at the start of Ramadan and at Eid. If you have any ideas or want to see how you can help, get in touch by emailing coordinators@oxfordmutualaid.org
Here’s a donation station poster to go in any house, workplace, or street. Get collecting!
Cleaning our new storage space
OMA has wonderfully been granted access to a large storage space near the station. It needs a good cleanup so we’re looking for as much help as possible. We will be there from 3-6pm on Wednesday 15th March with Oxford Community Action who will also be helping. It will be lovely and jovial so please come down for some OMA/OCA bonding!
The place also has no electricity or water, and so if you can help out with either donation of portable floodlights or head-torches or access to water in the area, then please let us know.
If you might be around to help out, then please email coordinators@oxfordmutualaid.org.
County Vision for Volunteering
OCVA and Community First Oxfordshire are gathering community experience of volunteering in Oxford. On Tuesday 21st of March at 11.30am there is a 45-minute informal zoom chat to discuss volunteer needs. It’s a chance to hear and share experiences and ideas with volunteers from across Oxfordshire, and is open to all volunteers and people involved in unpaid community action, activism or support.
They would like to hear how volunteers and would-be volunteers can be supported by decision-makers like councils, funding bodies, and the voluntary sector itself. How can we ensure that everyone has access to voluntary opportunities? What’s needed to empower existing volunteers to continue in community action? These discussions often focus on the needs of the organisations (and I’m sure that it’ll be a part of the zoom discussion) but the needs of volunteers as individuals are often overlooked. Lets change that!
If you have any ideas, or just think that it’s an interesting topic, then please come along.
Date: 21.03.2023
Time: 11.30
Zoom Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83593945080?pwd=WEh0OW15aUgzK0Y0dk83em9FcmI3dz09
Fruit and Veg shortage
We, along with many others, are trying to cope with the enormous shortage of fresh produce at the moment. We are looking to diversify our food sources and so if you know of any businesses, shops, allotments, or farms that may be able to help us, then please let us know or reach out yourselves to them. It’s always good to remember one of OMA’s oldest sayings: ‘If you don’t ask, you don’t get!’.
Feedback
You came on your BIKE?! You must be very cold … thank you so much, you are a life saver, you have no idea … thank you thank you!
Thanks for another generous delivery. The cats are delighted and so am I. Wonderful treats!