Feed One Feed All has had a nomadic life since founder Lillie Giang first started cooking for the community during the June 2021 storm weather event in the Dandenong Ranges.
“When the storm came through, me and a group of volunteers set up a makeshift kitchen every Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” Ms Giang said.
“We were cooking hot meals for the community, people who lost power and the emergency workers.”
Self-funded and helped by donations from friends, Ms Giang started cooking from home after Covid restrictions stopped her and the other volunteers from being able to set up in the hills.
She said when what started as 50 meals quickly grew to hundreds each week, she connected with a local Chinese Association to make use of their kitchen.
“We started cooking from there and eventually moved up to Lilydale for several months,” Ms Liang said.
“We don’t have a permanent place of our own, we are using someone else’s kitchen and wherever we can go to do the meals.”
Now based in Scoresby, those meals regularly rotate, with ramen noodles, vegetarian stir-fry and mushroom carbonara on the menu when the Star Mail spoke to Ms Giang.
She said the volunteer-led not-for-profit offers meals made with uncycled usable food to people who are in disadvantaged situations, while also offering community cooking classes and the opportunity to build skills within the kitchen.
Ms Giang said Feed One Feed All recently received a $25,000 donation from Sunbites, which will help them feed even more people.
“We do a lot of fundraising ourselves to make sure that we’ve got money to pay for food,” she said.
“We’re constantly looking for more volunteers to come and help us because the idea is to cook more and reach out to more people in need of help.”
The donation came from the Sunbites Good Fuel Fund, an initiative to “fuel local charities and shine a light on the charity heroes behind them doing good in their communities.”
Ambassador for the Good Fuel Fund and AFLW player Moana Hope said she has witnessed first-hand the “contribution local charities make to communities and just how much this can go unnoticed.”
“I’d encourage all Aussies to go out and recognise the good that is being done by locals, as a small contribution really can go a long way,” she said.
To find out more about Feed One Feed All, visit fofa.org.au.
