Giving food relief
More people are now relying on Warragul’s Food Relief for their weekly groceries.
Volunteers Trish Addison and Jan Davidson said demand so far this year was about 15 per cent higher than it was 12 months ago.
The program run for the past 15 years by district combined churches for people throughout Baw Baw Shire last year met the needs of 830 individual recipients that received almost 2600 packages.
Ms Addison and Ms Davidson, part of an overall team of 60 volunteers that provide their time at the store in Pearse St, co-located with the combined churches’ opportunity shop, said they’d noticed an increase in the number of homeless in the area.
They also said there were single mothers and fathers as well as families that needed assistance at times because of unexpected bills and rising costs of accommodation, council rates, electricity, gas, and water and sewerage or the breadwinner has lost his or her job.
But they also point out that there are many others in the “asset rich, cash poor” category such as pensioners living in their own homes, middle aged single people and “money poor” farmers that at times don’t have enough money to pay for groceries.
The Food Relief “mini-supermarket” has stocks of perishable, frozen and packaged food and other household essential such as toilet paper and toothpaste and toothbrushes.
“Customers” generally pay about $10 for a trolley of goods, something Ms Davidson said gave them a sense of ownership rather than appearing to rely on hand-outs.
“The prices are cheap but not a giveaway,” she said.
Occasionally there are those that simply don’t have any money to feed themselves or their children so the charge may be waived.
The program receives a number of donations from growers in the district, food outlets that have surplus stock, supermarkets and manufacturers but buys a substantial amount of its products through the National Foodbank organisation of which the Warragul group is an agency. The Warragul shop relies on fund-raising to meet costs; overheads such as rent, electricity as well as buying supplies for the store.
The opportunity shop is an integral part of that but other fund-raising is needed.
Ms Addison and Ms Davidson said a new initiative, “Pay Forward”, had been introduced – details are on the Baw Baw Food Relief website – where people can donate $10 to pay for a needy person walk out of the shop with a trolley full of food.
They don’t see their volunteer work at the store as a chore. “It’s so rewarding knowing that when people walk out of the store they have enough to feed themselves and their children,” they agreed.
A research report, Rumbling Tummies” by Foodbank states 22 per cent of Australian children and 15 per cent of adults experienced food insecurity last year.
At least once a week 18 per cent of children go to school without having breakfast, 15 per cent don’t have a packed lunch or lunch money and 11 per cent go to bed without dinner.