It has been one year since our first shop opens at Owairaka communtiy hub, from serving 62 families in 60 minutes, to now we have served 92 families within 30 mins at our newest open shop at Westgate.
Our local volunteers team has grow from 3 to 35 people 🙌 Still the same 3 hours of services, we now serve over 300 families each week 🍅
We believe everyone is doing their part to help and support our mission, which rescue ourselves from low living poverty status. We need good nutritious food, which good for our body, mind and soul as human beings. We don't need cheap food, or good value food by comparing prices between retailers. We need to have ability to make right decisions about good food for ourselves. That's why we are making some changes to our community shops.
We are grateful for having such amazing volunteers crew❤️ Our volunteers has been work tirelessly in past 50 weeks, next two weeks of school holidays we are going to close our shops in Sandringham and Westgate. We are going to reassess our operations, feedbacks we received from you, and gathering together our mind to focus on what's most important for all communities' need. What growers need and what families needs the most.
In addition to the changes we are making to our community shops, we also want to address the fact that our design is not perfect, and there are critical issues we are facing with our existing co-host model.
We have identified that some of our co-hosts may not have clear understanding of the purpose of our community shops. As a result, we are working on developing training programs and support systems to ensure that all of our co-hosts have the tools they need to succeed.
We are also exploring alternative models that will enable us to better serve our community and ensure the long-term sustainability of our organization. This includes exploring partnerships with other community organizations and exploring new funding opportunities.
We want to be transparent about these issues and let our community know that we are actively working on addressing them. We are committed to providing a high-quality service to our community and will continue to strive for excellence in everything we do.
Voices that matter, provide your feedbacks to help us to improve our services.
At our paid-forward community shop, we are dedicated to creating a safe and welcoming space where everyone can access the good food they need with dignity.
We are a not-for-profit social enterprise that is run entirely by local volunteers, and our mission is to empower families with good, healthy food options while also reducing food waste. We work with local farmers to rescue produce that would otherwise be left behind on the farm simply because it is not perfect for the sale, and we offer these items to our community at an affordable price.