‘Here Comes the Night’ sings out over the road out front of the Addi Road Food Pantry in Marrickville. A low-flying plane is coming in to land, adding to the Inner West soundtrack. The old Them song is a 1960s classic, with Van Morrison’s voice exultant and oddly melancholy, as if all of us somehow got lost in an old radio for a little while.
Food on the table restores pride, provides a breathing space for families and individuals alike to keep going while under pressure. It’s a matter integral to self-respect, offering a breathing space as incomes are sucked into rising rents and cost-of-living pressures that negate people’s ability to feed themselves. Mental health, relationships, emotional stamina, children’s levels of anxiety, the room to innovate in some small way and climb out of your difficulties is shot to pieces if you can’t afford enough food to get by each day.
Tune in to Dr Tanya Paterson explaining how Tradeswomen Australia and Addi Road are combining forces to inspire and help women to consider the possibility of becoming tradespeople and apprentices. She speaks here with Kate Saap of FBi Radio’s morning program ‘Up For It!’
Work opportunities and vocational possibilities for women as trainees and apprentices are in huge demand across Australia. Addi Road and Tradeswomen Australia are combining forces to show how you can become “a Jill of all trades”, ensuring stable jobs, good money and portable skills that can gain women quality employment anywhere they go.
Community can be a strange and unexpected thing. You can’t always advertise and promote or express it easily. Then something special happens – like last night – and everything about what do and who we are comes together without us even trying. We hope you feel some of that spirit in our newly-formed and somewhat loosely gathered ‘Addi Road Band’ doing their fine version of Waltzing Matilda.
Beth from Reunion in Newtown came down to Addi Road to donate vintage and designer clothes for winter. She talks about her belief in an environmentally friendly, circular economy that Addi Road is also a part of in Sydney’s Inner West.
Audrey is the teenage force behind our Addi Rock youth music festival on September 16. Curated and run by a group of 16-year-olds the event will feature eighteen bands and solo artists. Audrey explains what inspired her to launch the event.
One hour left till closing time at the Addi Road Food Pantry. There’s just enough time to share some flowers. Two of our volunteers, Annerie and Ros, stand outside in a last splash of afternoon sunlight, making use of a bench to carve up a thick crop of purple succulents that “some nice man” has randomly donated..
When AFL team the Sydney Swans swept into Marrickville West Primary School last week you can imagine the fuss and excitement. Working together in partnership with Addi Road, the Swans were all the more popular for offering us a big helping hand at the MWPS’ Breakfast Club that is run at the school by Connect Marrickville.
Colombian students shopping at Addi Road Food Pantry Marrickville: “This place here… it’s a really good place.”
