News
If the Cowfolk are doing it, this is where it’s at…
Community crisis veg boxes
Together with our home pub the Plough, we have mobilised a free delivery service for our community during the current crisis. We are providing a free fruit+veg box as well as home-cooked meals to folks who are vulnerable, self-isolating or struggling financially due to the lockdown.
We’ve been receiving requests through our online form as well as referrals from the National Food Service Helpline, Aid Box Community, Project Mama and various other organisations representing vulnerable people in the city. There is no judgment of ‘need’, we aim to get a box to anyone who asks for one.
We’ve been doing delivery runs twice a week for 9 weeks now and have so far delivered over 4,200 fruit+veg boxes and over 1,600 cooked meals.
As the demand increases, we have now been joined by the Lion, Chelsea, Pipe and Slippers and Star & Garter pubs as packing venues, each bringing their own community of volunteers and each adding around 100 boxes per day to our capacity.
This is all thanks to generous donations received through our Fundsurfer page, a £5000 grant from the Quartet Foundation’s Coronavirus Response Fund, plus an ever-growing and very dedicated army of volunteer coordinators, packers and delivery drivers as well as various donations of food, space and equipment*. The club has agreed to donate up to £1000 to help keep those boxes coming.
We are not asking for payment for the food but will take donations from those who want to give. All info on how to order, donate or volunteer is on our Fundsurfer page. Please share and donate if you can:
www.fundsurfer.com/crowdfund/community-care-package
As each delivery run costs around £1250 and demand is growing, we need to keep the donations rolling in so we can continue providing this essential service for our community over the coming weeks.
£5 will cover the cost of a box, £10 will also pay for a box for somebody else. Everyone involved is donating their time so all donations go to buying produce. We are coordinating and sharing with various organisations, such as Bristol Outreach Services for the Homeless (BOSH), FoodCycle, Helping Homeless Believe, BASE cafe, Wild Goose and Coexist Community Kitchen, to make sure that no surplus food is wasted and that food reaches those most in need.
*Thanks also to: All Hallows Hall, who have given us free use of their hall as a packing centre; the Volunteer Tavern who have let us use their kitchen while the Plough’s is being refurbished; Essential Wholefoods who have donated food; Hobbs House bakery who are donating bread; Nibly Leaves who have donated salad; a lab at UWE who are supplying us with a food-safe sterilisation solution; Linner, Izzy and Peg who have been at their sewing machines frantically sewing double-layer cotton masks so that we can do our best to prevent the spread of infection; Three Wise Monkeys, Hugos, Pawsons and Ashton Fruit Shop who are providing us with crates for the veg boxes..
If you want more information on what else is being done around Bristol, the Bristol Cable is collating an online database of organisations who are providing food or other support during the crisis, as well as volunteering and support groups.
An urgent message to members
As some of you may know the club and HQ (the Plough) have started to deliver free veg + fruit boxes to people in the community who are struggling to obtain fresh food (links below). The team have been crowd funding to pay for it and we chipped in £250 from the club account, the maximum that the committee can authorise without a club vote.
The demand is so high, we now want to ramp this up to 2 then 3 deliveries a week for the next 9 weeks. To do so we are applying for a grant from the Quartet Community Foundation as a partnership.
However, given the lockdown and short timescales, it’s impossible for us to hold an EGM to vote on anything and, as discussed at many previous meetings, online voting comes with a whole host of issues. Given the unprecedented nature and seriousness of the situation, WE ARE THEREFORE WRITING TO ASK FOR THE CLUB’S APPROVAL FOR THE COMMITTEE (Jody, Sal and Vern and Reps Steve T, Bex and Ian) TO ACT ON YOUR BEHALF.
The main decisions to be made are;
Do we enter into the partnership grant application? The committee feel that it seems right to pull together to support our members and community through such a rough time. We’ve discussed a number of potential issues with Kimmer, who’s working on the grant application, and are satisfied that there’s little or no risk to the club financially or legally.
Do we donate more than the £250 donated already? The veg box team have asked for a further £750, which would constitute 10% of the total budget. Again us committee folk feel that this is exactly the kind of thing we should be doing with our dosh, which we’ve been sitting on since our 2017 tournament. We can easily fundraise again when this is all over, and have a good record of making money on our tournaments.
Kim wants to submit the application on Monday morning. IN LIEU OF A QUORATE VOTE, WE ARE THEREFORE ASKING FOR ANY OBJECTIONS TO US SAYING YES TO THE TWO QUESTIONS ABOVE TO BE SENT TO US BY 9AM MONDAY.
We’re effectively asking you to override the constitution and trust us to make sensible, informed decisions that align with the club’s ethos and are what we believe the club would want. If any objections are raised, we will rethink how we might be able to get the club to vote on this, accepting that this will delay the grant application. Feedback/objections can be given to any of the committee/reps, or webgimp@eastoncowfolk.org.uk, or comment below.
PLEASE CAN ALL TEAM CAPTAINS/REPS ETC SHARE THIS ON ALL CHANNELS POSSIBLE ASAP.
Cheers,
Sally FW
Easton Cowboys and Cowgirls secretary
P.S…
To order a box:
https://forms.gle/sSfbzHNp6VFDMUs46
To volunteer your time:
https://forms.gle/y4HkxmPfSFLVU7fo8
To donate and spread the word:
www.fundsurfer.com/crowdfund/community-care-package
Memories: Netters get their shinnies on
Thought I’d start a series of ‘memories’* posts (as I’m bored in isolation) to take us all down memory lane together. If you have a memory you’d like to share, send it my way webgimp@eastoncowfolk.org.uk
So, Beesands 2015-ish. There was no women’s tourny so we’d been watching the blokes play all weekend feeling kinda jealous. Then we realised if we roped in some of the netters lasses and put a wig on wee Charlie we’d have enough for a game against the Yard ladies. Charlie was duly wigged up and Linner, Peg and Emma sorted themselves some proper shin protection using the nearest thing to hand. A tunnel of honour was formed outside the marquee and we made our glorious entrance to the pitch led by Kaz doing his best and only aerobics routine. What happened on the pitch? Who remembers, and quite frankly who cares.
*Disclaimer: my memory is not the most reliable, maybe something to do with all that cider who knows. Any amendments, retractions, clarifications or complaints, post em below.
Dance for Palestine fundraiser
Thanks to everyone who came out and supported the Cowfolk fundraiser at Easton Community Centre on 6th March. We raised £1553 for the Community Centre and a Palestinian family on the edge of a settlement who are facing eviction. The family is raising funds to develop their agri-tourism operation which is crucial to making it easier for them to make a living where they live.
And a big thanks and well done to everyone who helped organise and run this, massive team effort.
St. Pauli AntiRa 2020!
You know you want to…
Our friends from Hamburg and Leeds are visiting!
NOTE: CURRENTLY POSTPONED DUE TO COVID-19 :-/ WATCH THIS SPACE!
Our friends Frau Dorte Becker from Hamburg and Republica Internationale from Leeds are due to be visiting us for a long weekend 10th-13th April, yippee!
There’ll be chatting, a radical history tour of Bristol, kick-arounds, a ‘Football Welcomes Refugees’ tournament on the Sunday and of course lots of merriment in the Plough. So you have been warned!
Casual League food bank donation
The cowgirls contributed £86 worth of foods and hygiene products to the Bristol Womens Football Casual League food bank collection on Saturday! A massive thank you to everyone for donating.
Solidarity with Rojava
A message from the Easton Cowgirls…
From Riseup4rojava.org:
This month the Turkish occupation army and its Islamist allies began their long prepared war of aggression against the liberated areas of Northern Syria. Turkey promotes this as a military operation aimed at securing the boarder and establishing a so called “peace corridor”, but the fact is that the Turkish army and Islamic mercenaries under its command are concerned with nothing less than the occupation of the mostly Kurdish populated area along the Turkish-Syrian border. The regime in Ankara speaks of the “fight against terrorism” and emphasizes that their war of aggression is not about the war on the civilian population, but indiscriminate bombing of civilian settlements, looting and mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of people, arbitrary executions and the brutal abduction of hundreds of civilians speak a different language. The further the war against northern Syria progresses, the more it becomes clear, what Erdogan is really about, namely ethnic cleansing through the violent expulsion of millions of people and the long-term demographic change of the entire region.
For more information please visit riseup4rojava.org
Cowboys in Umm Al Khair
In cooperation with the Easton Cowboys, HIRN has rehabilitated the soccer
playground at Umm Al Khair Bedouin community.
We have replaced the goals, placed nets on them and bought a uniform for the Umm Al Khair soccer team.
After putting the goals up, a game of soccer took place. We all won !!!!!