Covid-19 Lockdown: How Addiscombe & East Croydon Residents can help their Neighbours

Zoom Meeting: Thursday 5th November 2020, 7 pm

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArfuigqjsvG9XfUYlRaVihYrXBiyN40afO

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Why attend this meeting?

In March 2020 when the first lockdown was imminent, a group of Addiscombe residents got together and set up a food donation point at St Mildred’s, Bingham Road, Addiscombe. It ran 5 days a week, for 4 hours a day, from April 2020 to August 2020. The centre collected food on behalf of Croydon Voluntary Action and Salvation Army (Croydon).

With a new lockdown imminent Croydon Voluntary Action contacted us again to see if Addiscombe residents were willing to restart a food donation point from 12th November 2020. CVA states the need for food parcels in Croydon is rising, and demand is expected to increase exponentially over the coming winter. CVA is working with organisations like FareShare to help use surplus supermarket food. Still, they found that the food donated by Addiscombe residents helped them to keep up with demand from Croydon residents who needed food parcels. Croydon Voluntary Action will be providing us with more information on the night about the likely demand for their services, and how communities like Addiscombe and East Croydon can help.

What we hope to achieve at the meeting

A number of residents have already indicated that they wish to help. The purpose of the meeting is to agree on a set of actions that we can take forward including:

1. Do we want to run a regular weekly food donation point? We may not be able to run it five days a week, but would it help to have one main site help co-ordinate food donations collections across the Addiscombe and East Croydon area? If we agree to run one, where should it be and for how many days a week?
2. How can we support the work of Croydon’s Mutual-Aid? Their work did so much in galvanising local residents to come together to support their neighbours?
3. How can we promote the Croydon Mutual-Aid One-Tin Initiative? In which local residents host a #onetin bin in their front garden as a collection point for donated food bank items. We could help Croydon Mutual-Aid find more residents in Addiscombe and East Croydon to host one of the yellow wheelie Bins in their front gardens and help make sure there is a regular pick-up of donated items.
4. How do we publicise our actions? As well as promoting our initiatives last time on social media, we also printed a leaflet that went through 10,000 front doors. Do we want to do this again?
5. How can Individuals, groups or residents, and community groups and organisations get involved? What we found last time that more hands did make a difference, and many of us found that it was personally very satisfying and good for our own mental health.
6. Any other good ideas for community action? Just because a suggestion hasn’t been mentioned in this article doesn’t mean there aren’t any other ideas we should consider. Let us know.

So please join the meeting on Thursday if you are able. The meeting is being hosted by Addiscombe Councillors but this is a non-party political event in support of local residents who want to make a difference during this difficult time.

Contact for Zoom Meeting

If you want to get more information on this event and initiatives, please email me at [email protected].