The community is certainly at the heart of Glen Park Community Centre. Since opening the doors to its Community Pantry in 2018, the pantry provides food relief to families and community members of the Bayswater community.

The Community Pantry offers a selection of fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, frozen meals, non-perishable food and personal hygiene items for those in need. A home-cooked meal (from the attached Café on the Park social enterprise) and hearty conversation are also served up to pantry attendees.

Glen Park Community Centre CEO Heidi Butler-Moore believes the key is to provide a space which connects the Community Pantry members to the wider community.

“There would be many people that may find food resources somewhere else but I don’t think they would have the connectedness they have now through the pantry. It’s the ripple effect of that, which I think is really benefiting our community,” she said.

With qualified chef Naomi Butler-Moore at the helm, Glen Park Community Centre also hosts community meals several times a year. With many of the Community Pantry members attending these events, Heidi believes “the social inclusion part of the meals is the greatest outcome.”

Chef Naomi is proudly involved in all food activities at the Centre; from ordering and collecting food for the Community Pantry, to designing menus and preparing and cooking meals at the Café on the Park. For Naomi, working at Glen Park Community Centre can be emotional.

“It does bring me to tears a lot. It has opened my eyes to how much we waste as a society and how much people go without. When I’m out at the back of the ute sorting through the fruit and veggies and someone grabs you by the arm, and they have tears in their eyes thanking you, you just take a step back and think – wow. To me, I am just doing what I am doing, and you don’t realise the impact until something like that happens,” said Naomi.

As for the future of the Community Pantry, Heidi and her team are positive about increasing the number of families they assist. Regardless of what challenges they might face, Heidi passionately states – “we’ll make it work!”

Find out more about the Community Pantry and Café on the Park at Glen Park Community Centre, at cafeonthepark.org.au

For almost 30 years, Darebin Information and Volunteer Resource Service (DIVRS) has been providing a wide range of support to its diverse community in Melbourne’s north.

Through the organisation’s food relief program, community members on a low income are entitled to collect a free parcel of staple groceries and a parcel of fresh produce. Running four days a week, the program is currently assisting 200 households a week, with that number rising.

“We’ve got around seven to 10 new clients coming to us each week. That’s why we need to prepare for this increasing need, which will be significant over the next five to 10 years,” said Frances Trimboli, Executive Officer at DIVRS.

Complementing the products sourced through food charities, DIVRS has a trained horticulturist and team of volunteers who manage the Urban Food Program – a series of grassroots initiatives addressing the challenges of food insecurity in the Darebin community.

Current projects include The Backyard Basics: a thriving on-site garden with a greenhouse to cultivate seedlings and raised garden beds growing edibles; and The Darebin Fruit Squad: a team of volunteers who harvest excess fruit and produce from households in the neighbourhood.

DIVRS also works with local schools around the issues of food insecurity through its Urban Food Program.

We provide seedlings and the schools grow some food on our behalf.

Last year DIVRS raised funds to purchase a van which Frances believes is a “game changer” for the community.

“Now with the van, it provides a resource to Darebin and the northern suburbs because our volunteer group can go out on a weekly basis and do weekly pickups from Foodbank. We will be taking a lead role in doing some of the pickups for some of the smaller agencies that are part of the emergency relief network for Darebin,” said Frances.

Find out more about Darebin Information and Volunteer Resource Service at divrs.org.au