Addi Road has moved another step closer to a green future with the arrival of our e-van. Funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), our brand-new Renault EV Kangoo will be used to stop food from going into landfill by collecting food donations and providing it for those in need.
Two rather grand-looking women are sitting patiently on chairs outside the Addi Road Food Pantry in Marrickville. One has a floral shopping trolley; the other, a few carry bags at her feet overflowing with food. It’s impossible not to want to take a photo of them. But they wave away the opportunity. Then they summon the photographer back to explain why they’d rather not have their picture taken.
Join the Zombie March against poverty as part of the national week of action, “Break the Poverty Machine”: 3-5pm, Saturday 13th of March, Addison Road Community Centre. Come in black, and get dusted with flour to become one of the living dead. Event will be filmed.
“When I saw the story on TV I saw your van, I saw the writing. And these people I knew getting their food.”
“Working here … you see a lot of people giving. It affects me a lot because it really does fill my heart with happiness to be in the middle of it all, helping out with everyone else.” – Mary
Towards the end of 2020 our Food Pantry Manager, Damien Moore, reckoned he’d been working so hard the time had come to drag him away “in a straitjacket singing that Donna Summer song, ‘Enough is Enough (I can’t go on no more!)’. I mean, it has been a pretty full-on year.”
“There is more to it than the hampers. We’re helping people, and we’re helping one another. We’re bringing people together. Helping people has different meanings to different people,” Matthew says sagely. “It helped me just to be here.”
“The hardest part is that the majority of people are still learning how to ask for help. Even after all this time it does not come naturally to them.” – Sallianne McClelland, Mobilising for Mogo, #Hampers of Hope at Addi Road.
The best gifts often have a story behind them. This coming week at Addi Road we will be putting together 1000 ‘Hampers of Hope’ for the holiday season…
