Ben and Jane Frawley started Mitcham Community Meal for the homeless

A Mitcham couple’s desire to help those doing it rough has quickly become a thriving community initiative. With a six month waitlist of people eager to volunteer, they’ve been overwhelmed by locals’ generosity.

Mitcham Community Meal is run and funded by volunteers.

In a matter of months, a Mitcham couple’s desire to help those doing it rough has become a thriving community initiative, with a six month waitlist of people eager to volunteer.

Ben and Jane Frawley set out to establish the Mitcham Community Meal program to offer nutritious meals to the people they saw begging around Britannia Mall.

And in endeavouring to help the suburb’s less fortunate, the couple have enjoyed the “added bonus” of discovering the “amazing generosity of Whitehorse residents”.

Mr Frawley said the community’s response to their idea to put on a free hot dinner every Sunday was overwhelming.

Ben and Jane Frawley run the community meal service in Mitcham.

“We’ve been blown away,” he said.

They began putting on dinners at All Saints’ Anglican Church in October, preparing the meal with friends they recruited from church and using their own ingredients.

To make the program viable the pair decided to try to organise community ‘teams’ to help run the evenings and supply ingredients.

“We thought it was going to be hard to get teams together,” Mr Frawley said.

But they were pleasantly surprised when they posted a call-out on Facebook, having been far from short on help ever since.

Church and youth groups, sporting clubs, school parents and families all responded, eager to have a turn running and stocking the kitchen.

Ben and Jane have been overwhelmed with volunteers.

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Mr Frawley said he had been humbled by the range of people wanting to be involved — having never thought they would be overwhelmed by offers from teenage footy and basketball teams.

They’ve also been encouraged by the number of children joining their parents to help cook, serve and clean.

Some nights have been run by three generations of one family, while recently 25 members of a youth group manned the stove.

“The night was chaos with noise and enthusiasm,” Mr Frawley said.

“Just golden.”

Mr Frawley said the meals were about community and connection as much as food.

He said while some of the 25-30 regular guests were homeless, others were tackling financial hardship, illness, addiction, or just didn’t have many people to talk to.

Volunteers bring their own ingredients and cook and serve for their guests.

To enhance the community vibe, cooking teams always sit and share the meal with their guests.

Mr Frawley said some of the youth group bonded with a regular guest over dinner and have since offered to help her with her huge garden.

He said the cooks eating with the guests also attested to the high standard of food being served.

Teams have been making “restaurant-quality” dishes including lasagne and chow mien and cheesecake and tiramisu for dessert.

Any leftover food is frozen and the Frawleys hand it out to guests they know are homeless and struggle to find food during the week.

They also hand out toiletry packs provided by local charity Pinchapoo.

Mr Frawley said it was heartwarming when a man proudly come to dinner one week “with hair like Barry Gibb” after using one of their shampoo packs at a local swimming pool’s showers.

Mitcham Community Meal also recently received a Federal Government cash boost to buy catering equipment.

The Frawleys are hoping to secure some sort of funding in the long term so volunteers don’t also need to pay for the food.

“It shouldn’t be a burden on the participants,” he said.

But for the moment, having to buy groceries isn’t quelling volunteers’ enthusiasm.

The meals are held at 18 Edward St, Mitcham on Sundays at 6pm.

More info: mitchamcommunitymeal.org