“I haven't got time to get frustrated,” Paul Nilson tells the ECHO, standing inside the Team Oasis community centre in Dingle, L8.
In little under two hours, Paul and a team of volunteers will collect food, drive it back to the centre and hand it out for free to those queuing outside - no questions asked. It will take roughly five minutes for the nearly ton-worth of food to be whittled down to barely a handful of items.
In the pop-up supermarket inside the building’s dance studio, the tables will be quickly packed down and stored away, ready to do it all again when food stocks come in - which could be as soon as the afternoon. “It has to be a joyous experience,” Paul says, speaking about the charity’s free food offer, even if it means carrying the burden of helping the community through the challenges it clearly faces.
READ MORE: Restoring hope in Dingle after being isolated and 'left behind'
According to the latest census data, Team Oasis on Park Hill Road is at the centre of some of the most deprived streets in the city. In the collection of homes along South Hill Road, Beloe Street and Cockburn Street, 7.2% of households are deprived in four dimensions, according to the office of national statistics, ranging from education, employment, health and housing.
“I'm not lost to the fact that a lot of these things should be provided by other statutory bodies,” the former businessman tells the ECHO, “but what can I do about it? Nothing. What I can do is make sure that those that we can help aren't falling through the net.”
'We will do it'
Just under a decade ago the walls surrounding Paul were filled with damp and rot, resembling little of the former Beresford Social Club which welcomed regulars from the Dingle and Toxteth area for decades. But with the help of funding, favours here and there, and a whole lot of elbow grease, the largely derelict shell was reopened to become the base for Team Oasis in 2013, a children’s charity founded by Paul in 2003.
The centre provides inclusive opportunities for children, with everything from football teams, dance and a film and photography club on offer. The charity has recently won awards for its intervention work, but today’s focus is food.
Paul’s Team Oasis minibus thankfully hasn't been impacted by the cold snap arriving this morning, but in the Bread Streets overlooking the Mersey, many window screens are still covered in ice as cars sputter to a start. Lately, the drive out to collect food from charitable distributor FareShare in Hunts Cross has become an increasingly familiar one for Paul and Team Oasis team members.
The team initially started providing free food in 2019 after the idea was raised by a local community member, but there was little take up at this point in time - perhaps down to need, or that households were still just about able to cope on their own. “Nothing, nobody came. Nobody,” says Paul, driving along Aigburth Road towards South Liverpool.
A year later all that changed. Paul added: “Only a few months before nobody was interested, then immediately we had 30 people through on the first day.”
He says around 80 households are now fed on the days of the week when the centre offers free food. Paul says this figure amounts to around half of the vulnerable households within the local area - somewhere that is caught between long term deprivation and increasing rents in the quaint Bread Streets overlooking the River Mersey, home to an expanding population of professionals and first time buyers.
On the issues faced by parts of the Dingle, Paul says the cost of living has gradually been building up and many can no longer bear the weight. “This goes back much further,” he says, adding: “The government never reversed any of its austerity measures [from the financial crash]. It just built on them. More austerity, Brexit, Covid. They want to blame it all on the war in Ukraine but it's an accumulative effect of those years of austerity.”
As a result, he says that all fees for clubs and programmes at Team Oasis have now been removed. “We don't want kids to not be able to come here. If you're skint in your house and you've got to make a decision between your child going to dance or to football, or food or heating, you're going to miss dance and football.
"I truly believe that people are going to be dying of cold and hunger this year. That's why we're offering this for free. How do we get by? Well we're in god’s hands then as to how we find the money to do this. There’s funding bids out there. We will do it.”
'It's either eat or put your heating on'
Tucked away on the industrial estate in Hunts Cross, other charities are loading up vans with palettes of food from Fareshare. Inside the warehouse, shelves are stacked with short date products that have been donated by supermarkets and other food producers, with Tesco one of the largest providers.
Gary Brindle manages the Hunts Cross site and talks through the collections of food in the industrial freezer and chill room, with everything from mangos and carrots to cereals recently stocked. All around are a team of volunteers hard at work filling trolleys for the collections booked in throughout the day.
Gary says that 75 charities were signed up to the scheme when he first started in the job a few years ago. Now 222 make regular trips to the depot - in part to the recent growth in foodbanks and community pantries.
Gary goes about his job with a smile on his face, but he can’t mask the anxiety being caused by the shift in living conditions of late. “I’m worried,” he tells the ECHO, offering a quick tour of the warehouse, “donations have dropped a lot - but demand is going up.”
With help from Paquito who manages the community centre, or Señor Paquito as he is affectionately referred to by children at Team Oasis, and Paul’s son, Paul Nilson Jr, the minibus is loaded to near capacity with trays of food and is driven back to Dingle. Upon arrival, among the volunteers carrying the stock into the centre is Arthur and Richie. Other members of the team also pitch to help set up today’s temporary supermarket.
With temperatures below freezing, those who’ve arrived early to collect the free food have been welcomed inside. One of those is Maria, 67, who only wanted to be referred to by her first name.
She says she’s been coming to the centre every Wednesday for food for the last six months. “I’m on my own, I’m a pensioner, it just helps,” she says, clutching a cup of coffee handed to her by one of the staff members.
Maria says that rising energy costs are one of the main pressures she is facing. £20 put on a prepayment metre on a Saturday will see her having to use the emergency allowance come Tuesday. “Everything is off at the walls until it needs to come on,” she says.
To save on energy she says she’s been wearing her “housecoat and a scarf” as well as “big thick socks” when at home. Maria added: “I go up to bed at about half seven. I used to sit up at night watching the tele. Now I find that if there's nobody round the house, I'll put myself in bed at 7pm and watch the tele there. Just to keep the heat in.”
“It's either eat or put your heating on, or come here for a bit,” adds Linda, 68, hovering by the couches in the centre’s main room.
'This is the most challenging time of my life'
Volunteers are still hard at work preparing the food to be handed out. The group of people waiting has started to swell and snakes around the corridor area, which is set to house a breakfast club for children in the coming months once funding is secured.
In the queue is Andy, a single parent who only wanted to be referred to by his first name. When asked how he is coping with the cost of living, he replies: “Coping? More like surviving. There’s a big difference between coping and surviving.”
He adds: “This is the most challenging time of my life. Rent is shooting up, gas, water, electricity, everything, but benefits aren't going up. It’s all got worse since Covid. Politicians say change this, change that, but what changes for us?”
Next to him in the queue is an older woman with bags at the ready. She says she’s here today not for herself but to collect food for her daughter and granddaughter, who needs it more than her. Her daughter cannot be here herself as she is at work. It’s a similar case for others in the queue who are making collections for neighbours and other vulnerable people in the area.
“I sometimes think I would like to be able to give people more, if you know what I mean,” says Arthur Kenny, 77, a volunteer. With bags of food handed out, the makeshift supermarket and its stalls are now almost completely empty.
“It goes within five minutes,” he adds, "the demand has grown a lot. There’s more people coming now than there ever was. It doesn’t slow down. it’s only speeding up.”
He, Richie and Paquito have the room packed away in minutes like a vanishing trick, with any remaining food placed on a small table in the foyer of the building. Some late arrivals miss out on the main offer, but pick up what they can from the stocks remaining.
One of those last to get a full bag from the day’s offering is Nicola Hunt, 52. She says she’s been coming here since the start of lockdown.
“We’re so blessed to have the team here,” she tells the ECHO, “if we didn't, people wouldn't eat - a lot of us would really go hungry, seriously.”
Nicola says she currently has three jobs and is still not always able to pay for everything. Heating her home is a growing challenge, but ensuring it isn’t impacted by damp is a battle that is becoming increasingly more difficult as temperatures plummet - especially as she and her teenage son suffer from asthma.
She added: “This is the hardest it's ever been. I've got a smart meter and I get anxiety from it. I can't look at it. I just can't have the heating on all of the time.
“All the fatcats are sitting there in multimillion pound houses. They aren't worrying about the heating. They need to know what's really going on behind the scenes.”
The final few people come through the door and pick up a handful of items from the table. Time is in short supply for those working full time through the worst of the cost of living crisis, but a matter of minutes can be the difference between a full cupboard and enough to eat.
Paul and the rest of the team set about their normal day, planning in the classes and clubs for the rest of the week, searching for funding here and there. A call could come in the afternoon from FareShare and the minibus will make its way through the south of the city once again, bringing essential items to the Dingle.
"I haven't got time to worry," says Paul about the efforts to help the local community and those most in need. “In the here and now, people are going to go hungry. I think people are going to die of cold. We've got to go out of our way.”
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