So! You think we can make up our organisation’s story as we go along, huh?! Well, it just ain’t possible!
We brainstorm, we dream, we draw mind maps, we meditate, we examine Excel spreadsheets that go on forever… we even communicate with a cabal of VitaminD-depleted data analysts working from a top secret location near Zurich… indeed we prepare for each year as if for war and peace!
This team snap was taken at the end of our Addi Road Action Plan Day for 2022. Our all-star cast is due to feature soon in a fabulously imagined new series streaming on your favourite local channel.
It’s called ‘The Return of Addi Road’.
To the everyday viewer it may seem like a bunch of regular people who’ve spent the last few hours discussing food justice, inequality, the environment, arts and culture, and how to most effectively engage with our community.
But like a hybrid of Ocean’s Eleven, the Justice League of America and Her Majesty’s Secret Service, these individuals have been hand-picked for their skills and powers… magic rope tricks, telekinesis, mind reading, digital comms, fire walking and super-human strength are just some of their abilities.
Unorthodox, you say? It’s how we roll!
On a more serious and genuinely superhuman note, Addi Road has fed 280,000 people in the last year via our two food pantries in Marrickville and Camperdown, our mobile outreach program and the culturally-appropriate hampers packed every week at our Addi Road Food Hub, all the while covid and lockdowns put our city on edge.
Our 300 plus volunteers a week – across 30 morning and afternoon shifts – have helped us move mountains for the good of the community.
As have all our amazing donors and partner organisations, pitching in, putting food on people’s tables and keeping everyone connected.
We also kicked off the inaugural Addi Road Writers’ Festival – and kept our StirrUp Gallery happening with a host of exhibitions, including the Public Schools Art Show. And launched what has become a national anti-racism campaign, its origins marked at the beginning of 2021 by freshly erected street signs across the Inner West saying ‘RacismNOTWelcome’. Local governments across Australia are gearing up to follow suit.
Our nine acre site in Marrickville continued to be a green space and an oasis of calm for many, many people locally. We published a book, ‘Ten Ordinary Men – The ANZACs of Addi Road’ based on our history, still visible in the old barracks and heritage-listed war-era buildings we maintain and use.
As custodians of the centre and its grounds, we continued to do our best with limited and unsteady project-based funding – and generous public donations – to attend to an ageing infrastructure, offering a home base to the forty plus artists and organisations by subsidising rents to keep them well below market rates.
Let’s not forget the 176 trees here on site as well. Yeah, social justice, food relief, arts and forestry (!), we do all that and a little bit more wherever and whenever we can.
Our community focus is always foremost in mind – and is once again at the heart of our plans for this coming year.
Keep an eye out for ‘The Return of Addi Road’ and our incredible ensemble cast, a few of whom are pictured here!