End Of Year Message

What a wild ride 2021 has been. We hope you managed to stay afloat. In that sea of change, OCA has steadily supplied hundreds of food parcels to the community, week in, week out, every week of the year. We look back on the year with many complicated feelings, but also a strong sense of gratitude for the hundreds of volunteers who have sustained our work and brought food, joy and a sense of community to thousands of families in Oxford.

Every week, OCA has built on the work of countless volunteers: people who pick up food from our amazing partners at SOFEA Community Larder and Oxford Food Hub and deliver it to Ark-T, volunteers who pack the food, volunteers who come to pick up food parcels for their communities, volunteers who welcome them at the door, collect money and coordinate distribution, volunteers who cook, look after, and entertain children during our holiday activities, volunteers who do our social media and fundraising, volunteers who do all the background admin work of orchestrating our activities, planning and preparing our next steps, volunteers who meet with our partners and represent OCA, and countless, countless other volunteers.

Then there are all our other wonderful partners without whom this work would be nearly impossible: we’re looking at you OX4 Food Crew: Waste2Taste CIC, Ark-T, @Flo’s – The Place in the Park; AIPFF, and all our other partner organisations – thank you! Without Oxford City Council‘s steady support our work would have been a lot harder as well – appreciation!

Finally, the gratitude and generosity of the families we have been supporting has been immensely motivating and rewarding. Together we raised £12’800 over the year to pay SOFEA Community Larder for food. More importantly, we could not have kept going without your smiles, kind words, and appreciative gestures. The borders between our volunteers and the families we support are very fluid: often families we support become our next volunteers, and the other way around.

Whether you are a volunteer, a partner, or someone who’s benefitted from our work, we want to end the year by saying THANK YOU to all of you. Whatever changes 2022 will bring, we are looking forward to continuing to build community, trust, and networks of mutual aid, peace, and love with all of you.

OCA