FareShare has doubled production of cooked, nutritious meals in response to a spike in food insecurity brought on by COVID-19.
We cooked 515,425 free meals in May – enough to feed a packed MCG five times over.
“With millions of people losing work and income, many international students stranded without support, elderly, sick and vulnerable people disconnected from normal support networks, FareShare has had to scale up rapidly,” said FareShare CEO Marcus Godinho.
Since the start of the outbreak, FareShare has cooked more than 100,000 free meals for international students in Melbourne and Brisbane and another 40,000 for Indigenous communities in Queensland – some of whom have been isolated by lockdown measures.
Substantial donations of fresh food from Woolworths have been critical ingredients to FareShare’s ability to double production during the pandemic. Last month alone Woolworths donated 15,600 kg of meat and 35,200 fresh vegetables to the FareShare kitchens as well as the services of 70 ALH Group chefs.
“At Woolworths we are incredibly proud of our partnership with FareShare and that during such challenging times for the community we have been able to work even closer together to help feed more vulnerable Australians in need,” said Brad Banducci, CEO of Woolworths Group.
The Victorian Government has also provided vital support enabling FareShare to hire 55 chefs stood down by the lockdown under the Working For Victoria program.
FareShare’s Abbotsford kitchen cooked 276,798 meals, compared with 131,409 last May, and our Brisbane kitchen which only opened in 2018 cooked 238,627 meals.
