Oasis Community Hub North Bristol: People not Projects

Case Study: Oasis Community Hub North Bristol giving food and agency to local people

Oasis North Community Food Pantry is in Lawrence Weston and is a community-led initiative run by volunteers. They provide food and community every week for people from the local area where people pay £4 and get up to £20 worth of food - some of which would otherwise go into landfill.

"There's a real good environmental benefit, and it's the sense of community that I think people get when they come. It feels like a community hub, people have a chat that they might not have had if they were home. They might be in a situation where they are stuck at home and they can't really go out much and come in here.' said Steff Probert former Oasis Hub Leader.

'Even if it's just 10 minutes of chat, people always leave here feeling better than what they did when they came in.'

The Food Pantry emphasises getting to know the people that come in, finding out about their stories and where they're at in life and having regular connections with them. It runs 51 weeks of the year. The volunteers who run the food pantry made that decision because they wanted it to be as open as possible.

'I think the bigger way for is around trying to connect people and, and those relationships.'

Relationships and longevity are key to how the Food Pantry runs. The choice is central to local involvement. People can decide on how many things they get from what the Pantry has available. Whilst others are involved on a volunteer basis behind the scenes and in the running of it.

Like many other small charities and initiatives, a big challenge is making things more sustainable and supporting core around costs, the costs that make things happen daily. For the Oasis North Community Food Pantry, part of that is investing in and releasing local leaders and changing perceptions.

'I think people feel a lot of the time around food provision that there's a stigma, but hopefully we're addressing that because there's nothing to do with that.'

'But I think about giving people, ownership, and autonomy, this community pantry model gives people real agency.'

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