As you may know...
The Porch has provided freshly cooked meals, showers, laundry and a wide range of help to homeless and vulnerably housed people for over 35 years - totally free! We’re proud to be part of a network of crucial agencies in Oxford but we’re unique in providing this support all under one roof.
Central to our work is food – the daily and nutritious meals that are enjoyed at our centre and prepared on site at the Porch Community Café. These delicious meals are cooked from scratch every day – often using our own allotment produce and whatever other ingredients are available any given day. Some of our most popular meals include Lorraine’s fresh vegetable curry, our tasty roasts and Mediterranean chicken with roasted vegetables!
We're now open 7-days-a-week, providing breakfasts Saturdays and Sundays to help support local vulnerable people. As usual, we’ll be opening on Christmas Day when our team will lay on a full roast dinner with all the trimmings. We’ll also be providing useful supplies such as blankets, hot water bottles, thermos flasks and torches.
We provide food parcels too and at Christmas time, this means we’ll be making up food hampers as chosen by each of the Porch members.
The Porch Community Café is also an important part of our Moving Forwards Programme that develops financial resilience - helping our members get a foothold in the hospitality sector through training and new opportunities for work.
Why we need you… our Winter Challenge
Unfortunately, demand for our service is still growing. Before Covid we served about 35 people per day and now we serve an average of about 70 fresh and healthy lunches daily. In the last year, this has helped nearly 500 different people!
We’re grateful many of our ingredients are donated by supermarkets, partners and the public, but inflation has already hit the cost of delivering our meals. And extending our hours and opening times to weekends needs more resources to do the cooking, run the centre and for our dedicated team to be on hand for a welcoming and safe experience.
So this year we want our Winter Fundraiser to help us provide breakfasts and lunches over the most challenging months. Your donations will help us meet the cost of providing hot and nutritious meals from the Porch Community Café and, what all of us need - food, company and sanctuary!
For example:
- £10 will provide us fresh milk for a day
- £15 will provide maintenance & upkeep of our ovens for a day
- £20 will provide three fresh, hot & nutritious lunches
We will always provide a vibrant & welcoming day centre - please help us if you can.
The Porch Team