Last year many of you were in contact with us as part of our Food Donation Feasibility Study and kindly contributed your time and expertise as we tried to piece together how we could help increase food donation in our region in the future. Your insights and ideas formed the recommendations for our new ‘Food Donation Education’ project.

Many challenges have been faced in recent times – drought, bushfires, floods and now COVID-19 and the need for food donation and assistance in our communities has grown.  Our project aims:

• to build the capacity of agencies to access ongoing funding and support for existing food donation
• increase regular access to surplus food for donation agencies, particularly fresh and frozen produce
• promote and facilitate food donation, collaboration and networking between agencies and donors.

Karen Rudkin has been engaged to assist agencies and manage the project. Many of you will have already spoken with Karen or met with her recently when she delivered your grant funded fuel cards or food packaging.  Her role will include:

• design and distribution of this quarterly eNewsletter
• development of a ‘Food Donation Toolkit’ with templates, guidelines and data sheets
• creating a promotional campaign to encourage food donation and  volunteers and to debunk food donation myths
• provide support and assist agencies with grant applications
• organise training workshops and a networking forum   

We are really looking forward to continuing to work with you in the coming months.