October 2024 - Newsletter 3 - The Fridge and its relationship with Action Porty

Porty Fridge Newsletter; October 2024

Hello and welcome to the Autumn newsletter from Portobello Fridge

The Fridge and its relationship with Action Porty

We have had quite a few new volunteers join us in the last few months, so I thought it was a good time to give a little history of how the Fridge came about, how we fit into the wider community and our relationship with Action Porty. I therefore spoke to Alison Jeffrey Thom, the Action Porty Volunteer Coordinator and asked her a few questions.

What is the relationship between Action Porty and the Fridge?

Action Porty is like the Fridge's 'adopted parent' organisation. When the Fridge started up, it was supported by PEDAL- Portobello Transition Town, another local community organisation. This was always intended to be temporary support and in 2023, the Fridge reviewed its governance options and approached Action Porty and both sides agreed to join together to bring Porty Fridge into the Action Porty 'family'.

On a practical level, this means that the Fridge benefits from Action Porty's charitable status and is covered by their insurance and uses Action Porty financial systems and bank account.

When was Action Porty set up and what was its main aim?

Action Porty grew out of a campaign in 2016 to save the former Portobello Old Parish Church buildings on Bellfield St for community use. After a long community consultation and mobilisation process, Action Porty's purchase of Bellfield for the community became the first successful urban community right-to-buy in Scotland and Bellfield re-opened to the community with a day of celebrations in June 2018.

The vision of Action Porty has always been far broader than just one building, asking 'How can Porty organise as a community to better recognise and meet our needs, our challenges and our opportunities?' To this end Action Porty became a Development Trust and our charitable objectives include the advancement of: community development, urban regeneration, citizenship, environmental protection, recreational facilities, the arts, heritage and culture, and relief of those in hardship.

Action Porty has always been a membership-led organisation and in 2022, we converted to a charitable Community Benefit Society which means we operate on a not-for-profit basis for purposes that benefit the community as a whole, not just our members. This enables us to run a community share issue to part-fund the redevelopment of Bellfield, while retaining our existing charitable objectives and preserving our charitable status.

2. How is Action Porty run, how many staff /volunteers etc?

Action Porty is governed by a Board of Trustees, which, as of last year, includes two nominated Porty Fridge representatives; Anne Budo and David Cooper, as well as Jennifer Elliot, who is also part of the Fridge, and who has been an Action Porty Trustee since 2017. There are 4 part-time staff.

In addition to all the Fridge volunteers, there are around 75 volunteers 'on the books' for Bellfield and Bellfield projects. Like the Fridge some are very active and volunteer every week or a few times a month and others are a lot more ad hoc. Bellfield volunteer opportunities cover Welcome Hosts, Community Cafe Assistants, Community Cafe Bakers, Community Cafe Craft Leads, Garden Group, Maintenance/repairs, Event assistants, Communications & marketing, fundraising, office admin and there's always the possibility of creating new volunteer opportunities based on an individual's skill set or skills that they'd like to develop.

'Regarding the Fridge, I support the Coordinating Group with operational volunteer matters. Your Volunteer Coordinator, Carla does a great job of welcoming and supporting Fridge volunteers.

 Where are you based?

At Bellfield. The office is upstairs in the former church part of the building. The new-ish Porty Fridge freezer is just outside the office door. If you're collecting/dropping off food during office hours, then pop in and say 'hi'!

 What other community projects does Action Porty run?

Running Bellfield as a community venue is by far the biggest 'project' and currently there is a redevelopment project underway which will make the former church part of the building a more flexible space, suitable for a wider range of events, groups and meeting spaces. Our other projects include: Bellfield Community Cafe (every Friday 10am-12.30pm),Bellfield Community Garden and gardening group, 'VolunteerPorty' which is essentially my job, rather than a project as such, to support people into volunteering who might otherwise find it difficult to volunteer.

There are also several local development consultations and campaigns that Action Porty is and has been involved in - HeartTalk Porty; Seafield development for City Plan 2030; Save the Pitz! / Action Westbank

If any of our volunteers were interested in getting more involved in other projects, who should they get in contact with?

Me! if you're interested in other Action Porty volunteering opportunities or would like to find out more about other projects to share with others. We're particularly in need of more Welcome Hosts, which is an ad hoc, flexible role that can be as little as 15 minutes of your time on a Saturday or Sunday, and only whenever you happen to be available at a weekend.

If you're interested in finding out more about the Action Porty Board and what they've been doing recently or might be doing soon, then speak to Anne, Dave or Jennifer.

I'd like to highlight the upcoming Action Porty AGM - evening of 11th November at 7.30pm.  I'd also encourage all Fridge volunteers who live in Portobello (or within the Action Porty boundary) to become Action Porty Community Shareholder members, which you can do so here: https://www.bellfield.scot/membership This currently costs nothing!

Thanks to Alison for all that interesting information!

Christmas and Hogmanay Boxes

Freelance Job Opportunity - 60 hours in December

For the last 2 years we have run a successful Christmas and Hogmanay project as a response to the incredible amount of food waste generated at Christmas and New Year and to help the local community with boxes of free food delivered to a selection of local people. This was done wholly by volunteers the first year but last year a freelance Project Coordinator was recruited.

This year, thanks to a recent small grant from Youth Philanthropy Initiative won by pupils at Portobello High School, we are again going to be able to hire a Project Coordinator contractor to run the Christmas Eve and New Year Boxes Project. We can offer 60 hours, to be worked flexibly through Nov/Dec 2024 to deliver the smooth running of the project and would welcome job share applications. We would love if volunteers applied. For more information and how to apply have a look here. https://www.bellfield.scot/career . 

The Rota

It is great that we have new volunteers joining the fridge and hopefully enjoying the experience but one consequence of all the lovely new faces is that some shifts have become very popular, particularly the shifts on Friday evening, and often people find they can’t find a slot when they would like to volunteer. We would therefore be grateful if everyone would be mindful of this and consider only adding yourself every other week, and not putting yourself down for too many weeks in advance, so everyone gets a chance of doing the shift. We have lots of other volunteering opportunities; we are often looking for extra people on the Saturday shift and there are often slots available for collectors. If you don’t have access to a vehicle, you can still get involved.  Some routes can be done with a cargo bike (and you can hire one from the bike library) while the collections from Aldi in Portobello on Friday and Saturday mornings can be done on foot (with the help of a shopping trolly or a bike.) We also like volunteers to go to collections in pairs so you can also become a buddy on a collection. Doing different shifts is a great way of finding out how different parts of the Fridge work!

Shopping Baskets on Saturday Morning

For the last few weeks, we have been trying out the use of shopping baskets for our service users on a Saturday morning with people now collect a shopping basket on arrival at the hall which they use to collect their items and then transfer to their own bags on a packing table. Volunteers are on hand to assist if necessary. People are welcome to return to the café and rejoing the queue if they would like to collect more food and there is some flexibility if we have a glut of bread and pastries! We are hoping that this will ensure there is a fairer distribution of food to everyone who wants to come to the Fridge. This has resulted in the need for a few more volunteers on Saturday morning, so please do sign up if you can and give it a try, it is a fun way to spend the morning!

Repairmongery

We're bringing repair services to Porty in partnership with Edinburgh Tool Library.  A soft launch last week resulted in 15 items to be repaired from 10 people and they are being worked on by our Repair Technician, Julian now and will find their way back to their owners in the next few weeks. Saturday 19th Oct will be the first of three drop off events at the Fridge when you can bring items to be fixed. Details of the project and other drop off dates can be found at  https://edinburghtoollibrary.org.uk/repairmongery/  and will be shared on our socials very soon.

Meeting

The next General Volunteers meeting is on Wednesday 23rd of October at 7:30 at Bellfield. It is great opportunity to ask questions and discuss ideas about the Fridge. In the meantime, if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions of what we might cover in a future Newsletter, please get in touch.