World Food Day: how you can help promote food security in your local community

Today is World Food Day.

Coinciding with the Foundation’s Feed Geelong Appeal, World Food Day celebrates the vital and far-reaching importance of food. After all, food is not only sustenance and nutrition, it’s culture and connection, it’s jobs and it’s life.

Have you ever experienced trouble accessing food?

I’m incredibly lucky that I have not. The closest I’ve got is not being able to get frozen berries for the past month at my local ALDI, which let’s be real is a minor inconvenience at worst.

However, for more than 3 billion people (almost 40% of the world’s population) affording a healthy diet is something they struggle to do. And in the ‘lucky country,’ we tend to think of this as an issue worlds away from us.

But, the truth is food insecurity is something that many in our community are experiencing – and with the ongoing effects of the pandemic, it’s only getting worse.  Coupled with the fact that food waste is also on the rise – there’s clearly something that’s not quite working with our existing food systems.

And that is what World Food Day aims to change.

We are lucky to work with many incredible local community organisations challenging this system and ensuring that people throughout our region have access to healthy food.

Want to help your community celebrate World Food Day?

  1. Donate!

Donations are what enable the Foundation to continually assess the issues in our community and urgently deliver funds to where they are most critically needed. And we run solely off donations!

The Feed Geelong Appeal is your chance to make a real change to people in our region experiencing food insecurity. Are you able to help ensure your community has access to food?

Are you able to help Feed Geelong?

  1. Learn about food insecurity in our region (and the amazing programs running throughout our region tackling the challenge)

There are so many incredible programs running throughout our region that are facing the challenge of food insecurity head-on. And there are some really innovative ways these organisations are providing that support.

Take Feed Me Bellarine for instance, they collect spare food and excess produce and save it from landfill by distributing it amongst their community. Food rescue and food relief in one!

The Staying Grounded Project, an initiative of Common Ground Project,  is another awesome initiative, working with refugee and asylum seeker women to teach them regenerative agricultural practices and hospitality skills to prepare them for the workforce and distribute the food cooked (with many of the ingredients coming from their farm) to OneCare and other food relief organisations.

Trust me, once you start learning about all the good being done in our community, you’ll find it hard to stop! A good place to start is with the Feed Geelong website – it’s got grant highlights, stories and, research (our recent Food For Thought Report completed in partnership with Deakin University) showing how your donations are making sure people aren’t going to bed hungry.

  1. Tell others!

Like we said earlier, food insecurity is something that can sometimes seem worlds away. But the reality is that it’s right here. Your voice is powerful in helping to address food insecurity and helping to bring awareness to what’s happening in our region.

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