Wow! What a busy week it has been over here at The Community Grocer!
After receiving the news that the public housing estates in Flemington, Kensington and North Melbourne were going into a hard lockdown, we knew we had to work quickly to ensure that fresh, nutritious and culturally appropriate food would be available to all residents.
For all of us here at The Community Grocer, the news hit so close to home. Currently, two of our markets (Fitzroy and Carlton) are operating on public housing estates, and we had a market at Flemington public housing estates, one of those currently in hard lockdown, up until June 2019.
For us, this was our community and we knew they needed our support. We have such love for the vibrant communities living within public housing estates, so we were determined to help any way we could.
Within 24 hours of receiving the call, our first delivery of 1000 fresh, nutritious and culturally appropriate fruit and vegetable boxes had made its way to the housing estates. We called on our amazing partners from within Moving Feast (the collective of social enterprises joining forces to create a pandemic food response), including Fruit2Work and Melbourne Farmers’ Markets, to supply, prepare, pack and deliver these boxes.
Russell Shields, Founder and Chair of The Community Grocer, strongly believes that it is vital that the residents experiencing a hard lockdown are treated with dignity and provided with familiar and nutritious food.
“I can’t imagine the fear and anxiety that people in the lockdown towers are going through. The choice of their next meal has been taken away from them – that’s why it’s so important the food we collectively provide is full of health and nutrition.”
We put a lot of thought into what would go into three different types of boxes for residents to cater to different cultural backgrounds. For many years we have been providing culturally appropriate food at our markets and this helped us fill the boxes with foods we know our customers from the public housing estates eat and cook with - from ginger to okra to Chinese broccoli, for example. We believe that this shows respect to the residents and provides them with the choice to cook the meals they are familiar with and enjoy.
“Food is dignity, and we can show how much we care by the fresh food boxes we provide. I know each one has been individually packed full of goodness and hope.”
