Kelowna Community Fridge Meeting
Wednesday August 9, 2023
Agenda:
- Today’s Community BBQ/Pop Up Market
- Volunteer Roles (7 groups – Cleaning, Maintenance, Communication, Seeking, Transport, Cooking, Urgent Response)
- Communication within the collective
- Replacing the fridge outside
In attendance: Grey, Ollie, Anna-Marie, Frasier, Corey, Erika, Lisa, Amira, Amina, Tony, Reid
Minutes:
syilx Land Acknowledgement by Ollie
Introductions and pronouns
Today’s Pop Up:
- Lisa: The BBQ at the fridge today fed 80-100 people. “Very successful!”
- BBQ with burgers, table of fresh fruit and veg, and table of canned/boxed foods
- Collected prospective volunteer contact information during the event
- Lisa wants to do a fridge bbq weekly, every wednesday
- Donations came from Lisa, Naked Café, Okanagan Fruit Tree Project, Helen’s Acres, Vibrant Veggies, and many individuals!
- Lisa says she wants to start calling businesses in town for donations, with the ultimate aim of having 52 businesses sponsoring once a year. It would be nice to have specific contacts at each donor, like Starbucks
- Grey says each starbucks has its own contact.
- Lisa suggests volunteer role for on-call pickup from businesses, including people to call businesses asking for donations; her friend Annika will likely start on that soon.
- Ollie suggests making social media posts about costs of products (e.g. burgers – $40, if that’s the cost) so people can sponsor specific items
- Lissa suggests pitting apricots tomorrow morning and freezing them so they don’t spoil.
- There were 6 volunteers at today’s pop up.
Volunteer Roles:
- Ollie suggests 6 teams, different volunteer roles
- Communication
- Seeking (looking for food/etc supplies)
- Cleaning
- Maintenance
- Transport
- Cooking
- Ollie suggests having a What’sapp chat for each other these teams – there’s general consensus that’d be a good move
- Lisa suggests having a general chat for coordinating/sharing when there are big drop offs, e.g. when there are lots of fresh greens
- Ollie asks how people like whatapp compared to Slack – generally people are liking it, Grey and Lisa both note it’s helpful to have more engaged/responsive members in the chat
- Lisa suggests adding more channels – Ollie says we can make a whatsapp group for each team, all together under the KCF whatsapp ‘community’
- Lisa suggests having a chat to reach out when bulk drop offs need to be packaged, aka sandwiches or pastries all dropped off in one container, flats of fruit, etc
- Grey says this falls under ‘cooking’
- Erika asks about packaging bulk foods into smaller containers, like ziplock bags – if that counts as ‘sealed’
- Lisa says that people were appreciative of foods being split up, like goldfish crackers in sandwich bags
- The group is unsure if ziplocks is appropriate foodsafe or not, if there needs to be a single open seal; some concerns voiced about contamination.
- Ollie clarifies that if someone gets sick from the fridge, volunteers are covered against legal action by the good samaritan act, though it is obviously important to make the food as safe as reasonably possible
- Lisa says people who access the fridge really likes pre-portioned bags of bulk foods like rice + lentils
- group decides on using ziplocks for packaging bulk foods, to be revisited if any issues arise
- Ollie has a social media post in the works with the different volunteer teams
Communication within the collective
- Ollie: we’re currently using slack and what’sapp. WA is more dynamic and on the go; Slack has different channels and more ability for people to respond to different conversations. There’s also a difference of immediacy: what’sapp is good for imemdiacy, while Slack is better for in-depth conversations where people can respond even a while after the posting. However, Slack does only give us a 3 month record, anything older goes behind significant paywall.
- What’sapp shows people’s phone numbers, Slack does not
- Erika suggests using email instead of what’sapp for new members/volunteers
- Ollie brings up the e-newsletter, semidefunct but set up and with subscribers. Is another good channel for people for whom various apps are not approachable. Could do a monthly newsletter!
- Grey wants to be involved with this!
- Lisa mentions that last wednesday the fridge was majoyly damaged. News person was there filming before she had a chance to clean or anything – having an on call urgent situations group would be beneficial for situations like this
- Grey suggests having specific peple on call for certain blocks throughout the week, who could come to the fridge if an emergency is happening.
- Lisa says having this as an action plan would be beneficial to avoid poor responses from community members and businesses if something similar happens again.
Replacing the fridge in the shed
- Ollie: we have 3 potential fridges, 2 offered from community members, another looking to buy us a more sturdy industrial fridge
- Lisa: Cleaning has been much better past couple weeks
- Lisa suggests having volunteers hang around the fridge more to keep things running smoothly, as discussed last meeting
- Grey says this would be especially good on hot days
- Ollie says having a volunteer on site would be good for the fridge’s culture
- Lisa says there’s a much better chance of her being comfortable with a new fridge going outside if we had that kind of volunteer presence on site more often.
- Anna-Marie expresses concerns about people touching food in the fridge without taking it.
- Lisa suggests a volunteer shift in the 6-8pm range to move bulk foods inside for the night, and stock more ready to eat foods on the shelves/in the fridge
- Lisa suggests shifts for portioning
- Lisa + Anna-Marie both share that community is often asking for bags, bringing reusable ones is very helpful
- Erika: it would be good to have emergency channel as well; Ollie to add that. Asks about locking the Fridge at night to avoid issues
- Ollie: that would have to be a big collective discussion/decision, as the fridge has been 24/7 since the beginning, and that’s a big part of the community fridge model
- Grey asks about doors on the pantry.
- Lisa: likes the idea of it continuing as 24/7
- Many group members agree this is a big benefit of the fridge
- Ollie: long term, would be good to build a new shed that’s insulated, has doors – this is especially good for winter
- Reid asks if there are the funds for a rebuild; Olli replies we would need to fundraise
- Lisa: The fridge needs a way to keep up with garbage, because it’s a big issue. Brings up possibility of fundraising for the Fridge to have its own garbage.
- Grey says they will add ‘contact companies about garbage’ to their list; Lisa to give contact info for waste disposal companies in town.
- Lisa notes that tying an extra garbage bag to the bin is important to prevent messes, allows people to take that bag instead of the one currently in use
- Lisa is fundraising for a fence to enclose her patio. Asks if other fridges fence at night.
- Anna-Marie mentions Parkinson’s Rec Centre as a potential indoor location for pop-ups during the winter.
- Erika brings up community Fridges in Vancouver and Montreal often face the street, which may help with community accountability; Lisa says that having the Fridge around the corner allows for people to have privacy while accessing
- Lisa wants to play it by ear, but hopefully there will be enough Maintenance and Urgent Response team sign up to get a fridge in the shed after next wednesday, to be discussed at the social Aug 16
- Lisa suggests reaching out about follow up stories from other news groups for better publicity, after the one that went out last week
- Lisa: check garbage bags as part of volunteer check list
- Erika has a group who could maybe sew reusable bags for the fridge. Says she will reach out to them.
- Lisa expressed wanting to keep the salon’s bathrooms private
- Lisa suggests asking natures fare and bulk barn for donations
- Ollie closes the meeting, thanking all for coming, with a shout out to Solidarity Sundays, another local mutual aid group 🙂
Kelowna Community Fridge 