Introducing the Community Foodshare Program to Geelong

Geelong “Sustainable Emergency Food Relief Workshop” City Hall - 15^th November, 2011

The Geelong Food Relief Centre is working with Foodbank Victoria to develop an exciting new program for the Geelong Region. If your agency is currently receiving food supplies either directly from Foodbank Victoria or through the Geelong Food Relief Centre Mini-Mart or bulk distribution service, this new program will directly affect you.

The Community Foodshare concept is basically a regional warehouse designed to allow communities such as Geelong, more efficient access to emergency relief resources – primarily food.  It will also help facilitate more local collections of donated and rescued food. 

Instead of having multiple sites run by different agencies that store and handle food, a Community Foodshare provides a facility that takes responsibility for the sourcing, storing, and distribution of food for all of the existing programs.

This will reduce the need for individual agencies to meet the cost of refrigeration equipment, energy costs and struggle with rostering volunteers and manage unexpected large food donations.

The most successful Community Foodshare-style programs currently operating are located in Wodonga, Dandenong and Warrnambool.  Across the state Foodshare models are now supporting a wider variety of programs such as soup kitchens, school breakfast clubs and many other community meal programs.

The key aspect of these programs is that they are built around need: supporting agencies to meet these needs with the provision of fresh nutritious food is where Foodshare comes in.

The Foodshare model proposed for Geelong will take into account all the expanding needs of the agencies currently being served and look at ways to ensure a sustainable supply of emergency food relief in the coming years for these and other agencies who would like to be involved.

To assist with planning the most relevant and importantly sustainable model to meet Geelong’s needs, Foodbank Victoria is providing a free workshop in Geelong.  This workshop, titled “Sustainable Emergency Food Relief”, has been delivered across the State to help communities build robust and sustainable programs.

The workshop has three essential objectives

1.     To identify what the needs are in your region.

2.     To understand what the Community Foodshare model is

3.     How to support communities to provide sustainable ER programs that meet real needs.

Help shape the direction of the Geelong Food Relief Centre’s plans for a Community Foodshare by ensuring that your expertise and input are reflected in the key outcomes from this workshop.

For more information please contact:
Lillian van Laar,
Chairman,
Geelong Food Relief Centre
Email: lillianvanlaar@gmail.com
Mobile: 0409 867 432