Anew community endeavour is set to be introduced to a Limestone Coast town in an effort to encourage community connection, aid with the cost of living crisis and reduce food waste.
The Glencoe Public Hall Committee is trialling a grow free cart, with the trial starting last Sunday.
The motto of the project is “take what you need and give what you can” with community members encouraged to donate non-perishable food, animal food, plants and fresh produce.
Glencoe Public Hall Committee member Rebecca Alexander saw the initiative take place in Adelaide suburbs through social media and wanted to involve the Glencoe community.
Mrs Alexander said the project was for everyone in the regional township not just those who were struggling with the rising cost of living.
“Everyone is free to come and help themselves to take what they want and if they have got stuff they do not want, excess or they do not use then they can put it on the cart and someone else will use it,” she said.
“We wanted to do more community stuff and not just necessarily fundraisers but stuff for the community that is not going to cost any money but bring the community together.
“We are limited on what goes on it because obviously we do not have the capacity and the manpower to go through clothes and toys and stuff like that.
“We find there are quite a few people in the area that grow fruit and vegetables and always have excess and do not want to go to the hassle of selling it so they can just drop down a box here and the community comes and just takes what they want.”
Mrs Alexander said the frequency of the cart’s availability will depend on how often it is used.
“At the moment we are going to trial on a Sunday and then build it up to however many days a week, whether that be seven days a week if we can,” she said.
“We just obviously need volunteers to put it out and bring it back in and hopefully it grows from there.
“From one week to the next, there will be something different on there because we do not know what is going to be donated.
“Some weeks it might be fruit, other weeks it might be vegetables, you never know what might be coming in.
“We still have more to add to the cart, we want to build like a little canopy over the top just to protect it a bit from the sun.”
Mrs Alexander said she hopes the cart will bridge the gap between the small township and their larger metropolitan counterparts.
“It also makes regional people feel like they are not missing out and they can have access to the same things people in the city have access to,” she said.
“There is a Foodbank in Mount Gambier but there are people here who cannot drive, cannot afford fuel to go into Mount Gambier to go to Foodbank so at least if there is enough on here, it can help take the pressure off the cost of living at the moment for them.
“It is about community looking after community. You do not have to give big for the cart to work.”
