SOCIETY
Feed our Community Alumna Maia's food poverty campaign has gone from strength to strength through the clever use of social media. by
O
CIAR A MORRIS
ld Exonian Maia Thomas has come to the forefront of many social issues over the past year; most notably she has advocated the Black Lives Matter movement in a way which rallied 400 people to meet at the Flowerpot Playing Fields in Exeter in June 2020 - as covered in last year’s edition. Recently, the activist began the Feed Our Community project, aiming to raise awareness and enact change upon the food poverty problem in Exeter. Thomas started the project on 17 January 2021, promoting the reduction of food waste and food poverty which was increasingly needed during the pandemic. In eight weeks, she incredibly helped deliver 2,900 free food packages to struggling families. For Maia, her social media presence has been integral in furthering the Feed our Community cause. In particular, she shares her gratitude for fresh produce donations which she posts photos of. Thomas started this with her own money, but the project built momentum as its Gofundme page grew from the donations of her compassionate followers. Therefore, by 25 January she shared the news that she had raised £4,000 along with the heart-warming volume of messages from those who had welcomed the packages. By February, the passion project 72 The Exonian 2021
was bolstered by the Bluegrass Group’s fundraising walk: over 100 miles were covered by 20 people, over 28 days. By March she had reached the £8,000 milestone. Moreover, Thomas extended the project’s outreach through what she promoted as ‘educational zooms on finance, budgeting and meal planning’. In this way, the change she was enacting would not just be a ripple, but a wave. From here, the Feed Our Community project has gone from strength to strength. As she addressed the food and toiletry shortage in the university community in March, she said: “It’s so great this project is able to support so many in need and that the community is jumping on board to get involved. It is lovely to see student accommodations going above and beyond to support their students.” Significantly, Maia’s achievements in this project have been recognised in the Express and Echo, by winning the Ron Todd Award for Equality 2021, as well as various BBC and ITV news articles. As her Ron Todd Award states, Maia epitomises the idea of ‘looking back to fight forward’. Whether it be aiding the community or advocating social issues, her resolve to ‘fight forward’ will inevitably persist.
