West Seattle Mutual Aid Party ๐ Updates!
West Seattle Mutual Aid Party๐, a partner of NW Hospitality, usually reserves their regular updates for their volunteers and supporters. However, here are snippets from their weekly updates from the last few weeks.
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4/10/2023 - Because of the large number of folks and supplies distributed, we are looking at making a request to do another food bank pickup outside of our regular schedule. Our regular food bank person is on vacation so they loaded us up for an expected four weeks of distro, but we've almost gone through it all within two weeks. I think the pace of sweeps and the new folks that we've been in contact with have caused this uptick in demand. Thanks to your support, we have the funds to make a Costco run to supplement the food we get from the food bank, if needed, which typically would be for favorites like Cup Of Noodles that are not always in supply at the food bank.
4/18/2023 - Unfortunately, we found out about a new sweep happening this week. Some people we hadn't met yet are getting cleared out of an area they have been safe in for a while. A couple of our team are working with support from Stop the Sweeps to help them get packed and moved. The constant violence of sweeps makes it nearly impossible for our friends to make any progress towards stability or savings, and all we can do is offer supplies and people to help them cope.
4/23/2023 - Because of the large number of folks and supplies distributed, we are looking at making a request to do another food bank pickup outside of our regular schedule. Our regular food bank person is on vacation so they loaded us up for an expected four weeks of distro, but we've almost gone through it all within two weeks. I think the pace of sweeps and the new folks that we've been in contact with have caused this uptick in demand. Thanks to your support, we have the funds to make a Costco run to supplement the food we get from the food bank, if needed, which typically would be for favorites like Cup Of Noodles that are not always in supply at the food bank.
5/4/2023 - Due to the large influx of people, we were running low on supplies but were able to coordinate with West Seattle Food Bank for an additional pickup. We're considering reaching out to the White Center Food Bank to see if an additional partnership could be made, especially since the South distro has multiple spots that see a dozen or more folks. Resiliency and spreading the load are the aims behind this, which is something we also try to incorporate into how we do distro and all of the other tasks surrounding that.
You can follow West Seattle Mutual Aid Party๐ on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MutualAidParty
And you can support them through NWH here or through their Patreon here.