Foodbank Australia CEO Jason Hincks with Coda chef Adam D’Sylva.
All Tom wanted was to provide a nourishing meal for his 9-year-old son. As a single parent and recovering alcoholic, Tom was challenged to put food on the table, but thanks to Foodbank he knows where each meal is coming from.
“I had to sacrifice so much for my son, just to make sure he didn’t go hungry. It was a terrible feeling,” said Tom, who requested City Journal to not use his surname.
“I was struggling every week until I became involved with Foodbank and their donations.”
Tom’s story is not uncommon, with more than 8,600 people in Victoria requiring food assistance last year, 35 per cent of whom were children.
Today Foodbank is launching Food Fight, a campaign aiming to provide food for the thousands of Australians going hungry each day.
The campaign will see the organisation partner with some of Australia’s most iconic household brands, including Kellogg’s and SPC, in what is the largest campaign in the charity’s history.
Throughout the month of August, when a Food Fight product is purchased, a food donation will be made to Foodbank from the participating brands, which will be channeled back into the community.
“Food Fight is a new innovation recognising that manufacturers are getting much better at reducing their waste, and therefore our ability to access excess food is diminishing,” Foodbank Victoria CEO Dave McNamara said.
“But our major partners all understand the importance of the work we do, so this is their way of helping us raise food to distribute to people in need.”
Foodbank is Victoria’s largest food relief organisation that works with a network of more than 800 partners to source and distribute food to Victorians in need. Farmers, manufacturers and retailers donate excess or unwanted food to the Victorian not-for-profit, which then transports the food to community organisations, such as the Salvation Army and St Vincent de Paul, across the state’s metropolitan, regional and rural areas.
While previously it was the homeless and unemployed seeking assistance, Mr McNamara said it is now predominantly working families, young people and single parents who request food relief due to rising consumer prices and unchanging wages.
“Families are dealing with things such as increasing rent, mortgages and utility bills and they see food as the one thing they can cut back on. That’s why people are finding themselves in this position,” he said.
“Winter can be a particularly difficult time of year, because families need to purchase warmer clothes and pay more for heating, all of which affects a family’s ability to spread that dollar further.”
A number of high profile chefs are supporting Food Fight, including Melbourne’s Adam D’Sylva, of Coda, and Scott Pickett, of the Estelle, who have prepared a number of dishes to inspire creativity with the everyday ingredients.
“The idea is to take ingredients families generally use and put a twist on it,” Mr McNamara said. “For those who don’t have access to many ingredients it can be challenging to be creative, so we’ve added this element to the campaign to try and bring some fun back into food.”
Last year Foodbank Victoria distributed more than 18 million meals across the state, feeding 526,000 Victorians, including 170,000 children.
For people like Tom, Foodbank has been essential to improving their quality of life.
“I was able to access groceries, cereal, fruit, yoghurt, anything I needed to support me and my son,” he said. “It meant everything to us because at the end of the day I had more money to spend on fun things children should experience.”
