FareShare Appeal

Hunger and malnutrition are usually associated with developing countries, but in Victoria over 300,000 people a year do not have regular access to enough food to lead an active healthy life.

FareShare is a non-profit charitable organisation working to fight hunger by providing free, healthy meals for the homeless and hungry. We use surplus food, donated by Melbourne businesses that would have otherwise ended up in landfill. Committed volunteers then turn half of these good fresh ingredients into nutritious emergency relief meals. These are then given free to 300 welfare agencies operating food banks, homeless shelters and soup kitchens across Victoria, along with fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, cereals and other rescued food products.

How will the funds be used?

We run a very lean organisation but still have to raise enough funds to employ two chefs to oversee our army of volunteer cooks, and drivers to collect food and distribute fresh food and cooked meals. Each meal costs us 50 cents to prepare, which allows us to give all of our food to charities for free. So every $100 donated makes 20 meals.

Our current kitchen in Abbotsford is now running at full capacity, cooking 500,000 meals a year. However research shows more free meals are required. By 2013 we aim to expand our kitchen operations to cook and give away one million meals each year. This significant growth means we need to raise more funds each year to run our kitchen, collect donated food and deliver free meals to charities.

Key Areas of Expenditure

Vital staff:

• two professional chefs to oversee 2,500 volunteers a year
• three drivers to collect donated food and deliver meals to emergency relief agencies
• food acquisition and distribution manager to coordinate the collection and distribution of 650,000 kg of food a year
• volunteer coordinator to coordinate 350 regular and over 2,000 corporate volunteers across almost 800 shifts a year

Running costs:

• keep six refrigerated vans on the road collecting and distribution food five days a week
• running a commercial sized kitchen that produces 2,000 meals a day
• maintain warehouse storage space to store and chill food

• Give a one-off donation online
• Give a regular donation online
• Donate by phone
To donate by phone, call 03 9428 0044. Please have your credit card details on hand when you call.
• Donate by mail
To donate by mail, please download a printable donation form and send through the post to:
1 Thompson Street
ABBOTTSFORD VIC 3067
• Leave a bequest
To leave a bequest in your will, please read the wills and bequests page for FareShare.