SWTAFE staff help families in need

South West TAFE has a long and proud history of supporting Warrnambool and District Food Share Inc. which distributes food hampers to vulnerable people and families across south west Victoria each week.

Volunteers collect food donations from supermarkets and other food outlets and pack hampers for welfare agencies to distribute to organisations, families or individuals who require emergency food assistance.

Food Share also provides hampers for the elderly, unemployed, people affected by natural disasters, schools and tertiary education providers with breakfast, childcare or fresh fruit programs.

Food is also given to churches running weekly free community soup kitchens. About 25,000kg of food is also directed to pig, cattle and chicken farmers each year.

The food collected is A grade, end-of-line, mislabeled or overrun stock that is suitable for human consumption.

Food Share also received weekly shipments of donated food from the Foodbank warehouse in Yarraville.

South West TAFE is pleased to have been part of helping Food Share prepare and distribute more than 100 hampers each week with 4970 hampers distributed in 2017 which assisted 12,500 people or 2268 families from the wider south west region.

South West TAFE staff members have assisted in co-ordinating the collection of food and cash donations and have helped out on site each Friday morning.

More than 100 staff have volunteered to be on this roster and for the past three years our staff have now volunteered more than 250 hours.

This year Food Share was awarded South West TAFE’s Community Collaboration Award at our Graduation and Awards ceremony.