Food For Thought

I didn’t think I would make it to the foodbank today as I had a late Sunday message to say that my son’s school was closed for a deep clean, but his incredible effort to cram all his home learning into an hour or so earned him freedom at home for the rest of the day and me a run to Digbeth and back. I did one round of bag packing and caught up with the same volunteers who were in on Friday as well. I then helped pick and bring out a bulk collection. This brought a surprise as it was for the foodbank organised by the Oasis school that we have helped at group runs and community missions for over a year. Seeing this interconnection between GoodGym, TAWS and Oasis Academy reminded me of all the times that we have seen organisations we have helped, helping each other, such as Fareshare, TAWS and Sifa Fireside. We really do get to see so much good going on without anyone really knowing anything about it. This left me quite reflective, and I pondered on the role of TAWS as I went back to bag packing. The Active Wellbeing Society is an organisation that is meant to galvanise communities into being active together, which became impossible at the outbreak of coronavirus. This led them to rapidly transform the organisation in response, redeploying staff to respond to food poverty and isolation. The building they currently use in Bromley Street is almost a symbol of the organisation itself. A repurposed space, which was almost certainly not a foodbank before, which reacts dynamically to various food coming in, and equally varied requirements for the food parcels coming out. I was thinking about how different the place looked now compared to September when I went for the first time, and nobody at TAWS could have imagined earlier in the year how different the organisation would be in response to the crisis. Then, getting back out of my thoughts, I found that we had collectively filled up most of the pallets with food parcels to be delivered. It really is invigorating to be involved in something so important, dynamic and purposeful.