You may have found this site having seen the Botley community fridge on ITV or having heard about it on JackFM.  This set of blogs talks about how the fridge was set up.  Please click here to find out how the fridge works.  We recently got a five star ranting from environmental health which we’re very proud of.  Also consider ‘liking’ the community fridge’s Facebook page.  Contact riki@phonecoop.coop or 07759 135811 if you want to know more.

We picked up our first batch of food from Tesco yesterday.  It is only meant to go to people in need, at our Mon & Sat 9-10am sessions.  Any food left over goes either to other people in need or to O’Hanlon House (the homeless shelter).

The environmental health officer visited last Thursday, and was impressed with our paperwork and the daily cleaning of the fridge.  Thank you so much to our excellent team of fridge cleaners!

She asked us to change a few things, notably to let the disinfectant spray sit for 5 minutes; to use paper towels to dry the fridge after cleaning; to check for pests daily; and to revise some bits of paperwork.  I will post the revised volunteer information on the website.

We could still use one or two fridge users who are willing to talk on camera about why they use the fridge and how the experience has been for them so far.  If you are interested, please email riki@phonecoop.coop or leave a message on 07759 135811.

At 9am today we took the “this is where the community fridge will be” sign off to reveal the “welcome to the Botley community fridge” sign.  We had two bunches of bananas, some lovely herbs, two loaves of bread, three bags of potatoes, and quite a lot of non-perishables available, some of which went immediately.  BBC Radio Oxford filmed the great event.  Now do come and visit the fridge: put food in and/or take food out!

Nearly invisible because the lighting was poor, but you’ll see John Clements of St. Peter & St. Paul Church with the (petite) community fridge in place in the fridge alcove.  Yessss!

The Church of St. Peter & St. Paul has kindly allowed the community fridge to be sited in one of its alcoves for a three month trial period.  First meeting will be Mon 27 Feb 5:45pm at the church.

The Community Action Group network will provide public liability insurance for the fridge.  I had to fill in a risk assessment form.  In case it’s of help to anyone else, here it is: cag-risk-assessment-for-botley-community-fridge

Found out that the church committee which needs to give the final yes/no to the Botley community fridge is meeting on the evening of 3 February.  Fingers crossed!

I have already bought a petite £30 fridge off Gumtree.  We can always scale this up if it goes ahead and is a roaring success.

I’m delighted to report that the Abundance Community Action Group (CAG) has offered to provide public liability insurance for the fridge in the short term.  In the longer term, the emerging Association of Botley Communities CAG has said that they are willing to be the fridge’s umbrella body, and to provide insurance through the CAG network.

Thank you very much to Dot (Abundance), Jade (Feeding the Gaps) and Chris (Assoc of Botley Comms) for solving one of the major headaches of this project.