Alocal service organisation has been unindated with community support following a recent public call out due to an increased demand caused by the cost of living crisis.
The Sunset Community Kitchen now provides over 70 meals per night twice a week in the last twelve months compared to less than 50 meals each night previously.
The group recently took to Facebook to ask the community to donate any excess produce they may have with the post receiving 225 shares.
Sunset Community Kitchen president Maree Thompson said the response from the community has been tremendous and is still ongoing.
“We had a huge response, I spent two days just travelling around and picking stuff up. Out to The Apple Farm to pick up big boxes, another apple place down the road, people that could not get in with their stuff and just people continuously dropping off stuff,” she said.
“There have been tomatoes, carrots, apples and pears and all sorts of produce donated and other people who do not have any spare produce went out and bought stuff to donate.
“We had something like four or five donations of mince and sausages and Mission Australia dropped off 25kg of mince from an office fundraiser.
“Woolworths funded $500 worth of groceries and we filled two trolleys worth with all the basic stuff like canned tomatoes, cooking oil and grated cheese.
“All this from one post and people even went and put money in our account. We are always looking for donations of produce.”
Mrs Thompson said while the recent community support is unsurprising, it is very valuable to the non for profit organistaion.
“We do not get funded in any way, it is all through donations of money through service clubs and produce that we can use and everyone is a volunteer,” she said.
“It did not surprise me because we have an amazing community, we have always been very lucky here and people support us but the support we got in this instance is still going on.
“I think it will continue for quite some time. We could operate without it but we would be struggling so this just makes it so much easier.
“I think a lot of people have the wrong idea about the people that we help here. They seem to think the only people we help here are homeless people but the bulk of the people we help are just struggling and most of them have jobs, it’s that working class poor.
“We are getting a lot of people coming, people we have not seen before who seem to be embarrassed about being here but they do not have to be because we do not ask any questions.”
The Sunset Community Kitchen invite committee, members, volunteers and supporters to their Annual General Meeting on Tuesday April 9 at the John Frew Centre from 6pm.
