Oasis: Pantry

Pantry Pantry

Oasis:Pantry opened in September 2020, to fulfil a growing need for long term access to low cost, high quality food. This need had been identified through a number of different channels, including the long term holiday hunger project run by Oasis (Make Lunch), and the emergency Covid-19 food parcel project which delivered weekly food parcels for 19 weeks in mid-2020. The pantry model has been adopted nationally to complement the crisis response offered by foodbank, and to offer people a way to stay out of crisis situations.

Oasis:Pantry is a community membership model – people choose to become members, which then means they can access a range of chilled foods, fruit and vegetables, storecupboard foods and toiletries each week for a small membership fee. We offer two membership levels, one at £2 each week and one at £3.

Our key principles

We believe that everyone should be able to access high quality, nutritious food at a price that is affordable, and that everyone should be treated with dignity and respect.

We follow “Dignity in Practice” principles to ensure that people who are experiencing food inequality feel welcomed, valued and involved, and feel that they have choice and control over the food they eat.

Our members

Our membership has grown to its current level of 75 members, and on average between 30 and 35 attend on any given week.

Reasons for membership are varied:

Some members have joined because of the impact of Covid on their household situation and finances. Perhaps because someone in the household has been furloughed or made redundant, or because they don’t qualify for any of the support measures put in place because of the nature of their employment;

60% of members are unemployed long term;

nearly 20% of our members are being supported having left their homes through domestic abuse;

two thirds are supported by support workers across a variety of different areas.

By age group By gender

Our Food Our partnerships

The bulk of our food is sourced through Fareshare Southwest, who deliver approximately 130kg of food to us weekly. They also offer occasional deliveries of a pallet of ambient food. We have a great working relationship with a local school, who ring us each week to share any chilled or fresh food from their own Fareshare Southwest delivery that they cannot utilise.

We are also part of the CropDrop scheme in B&NES, set up to match up allotment holders, and occasionally other organisations eg hotels with kitchen gardens, who have a surplus of a particular food with local organisations who can distribute that produce more widely. We have been fortunate enough to benefit from several CropDrop deliveries this autumn, which come with QR code links to recipes for us to distribute with the vegetables.

Any surplus food we have at the end of a session is redistributed again – either to Julian House, or to a local lunch club who are making and delivering soup and bread to their members while they are unable to meet in person. We have established networks with several local charities and agencies. We have a strong partnership with several different teams within Julian House, namely the Supported Housing team, Renew and the Homeless and Rough Sleepers team.

The attendance rate for the supported housing and Renew teams is good, however the attendance of the members referred by the rough sleepers team is low. A member of the Julian House staff team attends the session each week, and the support workers are actively encouraging members to attend.

We’re also working ever more closely with Genesis, both with the team at the Gateway Centre in Snowhill, and with the Foodbank team. We have received referrals from both, and are working with one of the Foodbank Trustees exploring options for providing wrap-around support and referrals to other agencies.

Word of mouth has proven to be a very powerful way of attracting new members. Of the 17 referrals by word of mouth, 5 can be linked to one member, with another due to join on their recommendation imminently!

We are part of the Affordable Food Network in Bath, which is a forum for all local organisations and charities involved in low cost or emergency food provision. This has proven a very valuable network, and we are working jointly on a number of initiatives which will benefit the wider group.

One of the great things to come out of this group’s work is a series of press releases on affordable food networks within Bath. Every month a different organisation or type of provision is featured.

I’m a domestic abuse survivor and have 2 young children. My benefits were stopped by mistake and I started to struggle to make ends meet. The Pantry has been a life saver over this period as I’ve been able to get nutritious food at a fraction of the usual price. The extra support over Christmas was amazing too and the presents we received really made the day.

(Anonymous member)

It is important for me during this difficult time to be a member of Oasis Pantry. It helps me a lot to manage my financial difficulties as they provide variety of food at an affordable price compared to the original price of the items. Volunteering is a choice in the pantry, so I have started to volunteer with Oasis’s team who are very supportive and friendly, I was keen to have this opportunity.

(Anonymous member and volunteer)

It’s been fantastic. Clients may sometimes rely on foodbank and that can become a dependency. Some of our clients come from a good 10-15 minutes walk away - they come with a sense a pride and independence. There’s no shame attached, they are having an experience of going shopping, and choosing their food, not receiving a handout. That transactional relationship is really important because it requires commitment. There’s not a sense of entitlement - there’s a sense of gratitude.

(Hannes Lann, Julian House supported housing team)

I’ve looked forward to my weekly visit to the Pantry, it is good to have some structure at the moment, a place to go which is safe and welcoming, and is there to help. Everyone is really friendly and it really brightens up my very lonely at the moment days.

Thank you to you all for everything you do for me and others.

Thank you for being there for us.

Thank goodness for the Oasis team….. Thank you for all you’ve done for the year.

Thank you for today…there were so many nice things.

Hearing the words “how are you doing?”, when this is the only time I might hear this in a week, is very valuable.

“Being part of Oasis:Pantry is such a privilege. Connecting with our members each week, and seeing their response to coming into the pantry is so special. We have a few people who come from outside our immediate area, and in each case it’s because they value the relationships we’ve built so much. For others, coming to the pantry at the moment is the highlight of their week – a chance to get out, to have a fixed routine in their week, the chance to say hello to another adult.

One of the most important things for me is that our members feel really welcomed and comfortable when they’re with us, and some of the conversations we have are a real testament to the amazing atmosphere our volunteers create. Everyone has a story, and I feel really privileged that some of our members choose to share theirs with us.

Hearing words like those in the box above, and having conversations like that weekly, really brings home to me just how important it is to have the Pantry open and running as we are, and how the ethos and values of Oasis rightly underpin everything we do.

I love working with our amazing volunteer team too – they are such lovely people, and have really gone over and above to support the Pantry this year. Coming in to work at the Pantry is honestly such a joy – I look forward to it every week!”