August 2022 - Welcome to our Newsletter

Gavin Watson

Feb 16, 20233 min read

Introduction

It has been a while since I produced a letter to our supporters. Like many organisations especially within our sector, Covid-19, the Flu, and the opportunity to take some holidays, has made resourcing our sector very challenging. This is then coupled with us still seeing people deciding for a see-change and moving away from Metro Melbourne. The key learning out of this has been the ability to make our organisation adapt constantly to challenges and that is a positive thing in the long term.

Our impact

More to come but $ value was $220,000 in total material aid which included $72,000 in food parcels, $46,000 in grocery vouchers and $56,000 to support school costs.

Fashion on a mission

Our pop-up sale is almost ready to go.

Chef2Home Grant

We have been successful in obtaining a $31,500 grant from the Banyule Charitable Fund to partner with local hospitality organisations to prepare premade meals and also to obtain the One box (fresh products) to go into the food collective. We also have one of our current students helping to roll this project out.

The Chef2Home! Project facilitates innovative partnerships between the local hospitality sector and local food relief services to support small local businesses that have been impacted by the COVID lockdowns, increase the availability of nutritious pre-made meals into the Banyule Emergency Relief Sector and increase access to healthy food for those in financial hardship.

Adopt a Pantry

We have launched a trial campaign – Adopt A Pantry – 1 month challenge – to help us and other Food Collective Partners to stock our community pantry network. Many more people are now turning to our pantries for some support, which is great news, but at the same time, we are struggling as a collective to keep up with the demand. So, this campaign aims to get more community groups involved in running food drives and “adopting” their local pantry for a month to help stock it. We hope this will also encourage wider community ownership over the network and therefore a strengthening of community relationships, projects, and spaces. On the day we launched the project, we had a wonderful group of local friends get together and do a food drive to stock the Hurstbridge and the Greenhills pantry. We have also been contacted by a community member involved with Diamond Valley College to also get involved! The poster is attached, so we can spread the word far and wide!

Job Advocate

Our Banyule City Council/Jobs Victoria Job Advocates have considered their pop-up location in our office to be a success so far and have expanded the service to be in our office space every Wednesday morning.

Tax Help

It is that time of year again when tax help season commences from July until October. Bookings are now available and this year we have also partnered up with Rosanna Neighbourhood house to offer the service from their space one day per week. Programs and partnerships like this, and the Job Advocate above show that working together is the best way to support recovery from the pandemic within our community and makes a lot of sense at anytime even without a crisis. We do not need to do everything ourselves we can work together to strengthen the community.

Volunteers Hub