COSH - progress update 21 Apr 2020
Posted: Tue 21 Apr 2020 1:48 pm
Things are moving apace. We still have money to spend. Latest figures here
The plan is for the next COSH funded round of help deliveries to go ahead on Thursday with the 'blessing' of the Lapta Mayor following our meeting with him yesterday.
the previous effort described here viewtopic.php?p=251555#p251555 ended with a summary of things that were 'problematic' with that effort. These were in four main main areas. The plan is to seek to progressively make improvements in these areas (and any others people might bring to my attention) with each subsequent effort and ill give an update on plans in each.
Content of 'aid packages'.
I was 'concerned' with the content of the packages. In terms of no fresh produce and just the choice of items in them and value for money issues in buying 30 times of a small packet of something. For this coming Thursday's effort we are hoping to have things like bread, flour, eggs, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, garlic, oranges and cucumbers, whilst sticking to a price range of 50ish TL per 'packet'. This in turn is leading to an abandonment of the 'aid box' concept really which brings me on to the next 'area of concern'.
Sourcing of produce.
Having decided to try and look at more 'fresh produce' for 'aid boxes' we went to starling to see what a 50TL ish box of the things listed above looked like, with a vague notion of arranging to have 30 or 40 or 50 such packages made up and individually bagged by starling ready for collection Thursday morning. It quickly became clear that such an approach was not efficient use of money. No disrespect to starling in any way but I also had concerns that there might be a temptation to put all the 'rubbish' potatoes etc in these bags or 'yesterdays unsold bread'. Hence we are going to try moving away from the whole 'standardised aid packet' approach. This has a series of potential issues around it, in terms of distribution, storage, wastage and the like but we are going to try and see how this goes. It has such massive potential benefits I think we have to give it a go. So Diana has been out yesterday and today looking to source 'in bulk' for Thursday's effort. The up sides have been immediate. Already she has source a donation at no cost of cucumbers from a neighbour of hers.
She is today, having got necessary travel permissions, in guzelyurt sourcing Oranges. We initially understood that we could get these direct from growers at about a fifth of the price that we could find locally at retail outlets. Latest info I have is that we may have sourced much larger amounts at no cost than initially thought.
This in itself does raise an issue that I would welcome feedback and input on. One of my starting principles back in the original thread was 'Zero admin cost'. The bottom line is there is a real cost to obtaining these oranges in terms of fuel to transport them. The oranges are free but the fuel is not. I do feel a sense of unease in using money raised on anything that is not actually food. For now it is not an issue and I can absorb such costs easily and happily as a 'donation' myself but long term issues like these will become more real. I know it sounds silly but I can not get 'thin end of the wedge' thoughts out of my head.
I will continue in a bit with the other 'concern' areas.
The plan is for the next COSH funded round of help deliveries to go ahead on Thursday with the 'blessing' of the Lapta Mayor following our meeting with him yesterday.
the previous effort described here viewtopic.php?p=251555#p251555 ended with a summary of things that were 'problematic' with that effort. These were in four main main areas. The plan is to seek to progressively make improvements in these areas (and any others people might bring to my attention) with each subsequent effort and ill give an update on plans in each.
Content of 'aid packages'.
I was 'concerned' with the content of the packages. In terms of no fresh produce and just the choice of items in them and value for money issues in buying 30 times of a small packet of something. For this coming Thursday's effort we are hoping to have things like bread, flour, eggs, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, garlic, oranges and cucumbers, whilst sticking to a price range of 50ish TL per 'packet'. This in turn is leading to an abandonment of the 'aid box' concept really which brings me on to the next 'area of concern'.
Sourcing of produce.
Having decided to try and look at more 'fresh produce' for 'aid boxes' we went to starling to see what a 50TL ish box of the things listed above looked like, with a vague notion of arranging to have 30 or 40 or 50 such packages made up and individually bagged by starling ready for collection Thursday morning. It quickly became clear that such an approach was not efficient use of money. No disrespect to starling in any way but I also had concerns that there might be a temptation to put all the 'rubbish' potatoes etc in these bags or 'yesterdays unsold bread'. Hence we are going to try moving away from the whole 'standardised aid packet' approach. This has a series of potential issues around it, in terms of distribution, storage, wastage and the like but we are going to try and see how this goes. It has such massive potential benefits I think we have to give it a go. So Diana has been out yesterday and today looking to source 'in bulk' for Thursday's effort. The up sides have been immediate. Already she has source a donation at no cost of cucumbers from a neighbour of hers.
She is today, having got necessary travel permissions, in guzelyurt sourcing Oranges. We initially understood that we could get these direct from growers at about a fifth of the price that we could find locally at retail outlets. Latest info I have is that we may have sourced much larger amounts at no cost than initially thought.
This in itself does raise an issue that I would welcome feedback and input on. One of my starting principles back in the original thread was 'Zero admin cost'. The bottom line is there is a real cost to obtaining these oranges in terms of fuel to transport them. The oranges are free but the fuel is not. I do feel a sense of unease in using money raised on anything that is not actually food. For now it is not an issue and I can absorb such costs easily and happily as a 'donation' myself but long term issues like these will become more real. I know it sounds silly but I can not get 'thin end of the wedge' thoughts out of my head.
I will continue in a bit with the other 'concern' areas.