ALDI ABERDARE

Oasis Pantry is a Food Pantry that provides food and domestic products for the people of Penywaun and Aberdare in South Wales. It is run by Oasis Community Church, Aberdare and is held at Oasis House, Heol Bryn Gwyn, Penywaun. , We hold two sessions a week on a Monday and Wednesday morning from 10am to 12pm. We are currently helping approx 20 families but have a waiting list which we would like to cover if we are able to obtain more supplies.

We offer a community shop in Maerdy RCT. Households are able to obtain food items, ambient, fresh, chilled and frozen, using a points system. This ensures that everyone gets a fare share of the items available. We need surplus food items to ensure that we can continue this very needed service for our community.

- Accommodation/housing - supported accommodation for people with complex needs We are a scheme that supports clients with complex needs, we aim to give support in areas such as budgeting, employment, mental health and substance misuse. We support our clients by transporting them to their appointments in regard to their mental health, we also book them in for full mental health assessments with the local GP. We link in with agencies to offer support one to one and within a group. We also transport clients to be able to get their depo or other medication linked to their mental health. We support our clients with their drug and alcohol misuse by getting them support via agencies such as barod and dyfodol so that they can get support one to one or within a group. We also support our clients with key working sessions surrounding any additional support they wish to have. We arrange activities for our clients within the local community so that they can gain new friendships and feel part of a community, within the activities they engage with mindfulness programmes and learn new skills through the programmes that the community offers. We aim to support our clients by setting up support plans and risk assessments the clients will go over these with their key worker so that they can see the areas that they are progressing in and what areas they can improve on and have their own input what other things they would like to add. Our clients go on mountain walks in the local area, and they also go to the local church in Blaenrhondda Chapel which is a church that accept volunteers to help at their church and gain a free lunch for doing so. We are a new project so have not had any other surplus donations but would like to partner up with participating stores to help show our clients that there is additional help out there and to make them feel included ad valued. Donations would help our project as it would enable us to use local and shop local. We are looking to enable our clients to gain new skills through cooking workshops, covering different themes on a weekly basis so they can understand the foods from different cultures. We would also like to promote healthy eating in our workshops so that our clients can prepare meals when they live independently on their own in the community, by gaining food donations it would enable us to run these work shops and would also help our clients when they need additional food until they get paid, they can go and collect what they need from our communal kitchen so they don't have to struggle. We are teaching our clients how to budget so by gaining food donations it would give them the understanding of how to make what food they purchase be used for multiple meals prepared and how to food prep. Getting food donations from the local community will show our clients that there is generosity out there and support.