Your Feed Melbourne Appeal donations will be doubled

EVERY dollar you donate to the Feed Melbourne Appeal will be doubled — and you can rest assured it will go to a food charity.

Feed Melbourne must - Leader, FareShare & LMCF partnership

EVERY dollar you donate to the Feed Melbourne Appeal will be doubled — and you can rest assured it will go to a food charity.

Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation (LMCF) has again pledged to match all contributions up to a total of $250,000.

LMCF chief executive Catherine Brown said backing the appeal was a sound social investment.

Every dollar donated goes to food charities with all marketing, administration and other behind the scenes costs covered by LMCF, FareShare and Leader Community News.

“There is also a very thorough grants application process so people can be assured their donation will go to a good cause,” Ms Brown said.

“We report on every grant that is made.”

The foundation recently released a report Time of Our Lives? which looked at why more than 500,000 single Australian women aged over 60 are living in long-term poverty, due to factors such as unpaid caring work, low superannuation contributions, the casualisation of the workforce and escaping family violence. Maintaining stable housing is critically important for these women.

“Food security is still a really big issue in Melbourne and it can happen unexpectedly due to a trigger such as loss of employment, family breakdown or ill health. Thinking about the long- term sustainable food systems for Melbourne is also important,” Ms Brown said.

FareShare chief executive Marcus Godinho said the appeal­ had enabled the food charity to open Australia’s largest charity kitchen, which will this year cook more than 1.25 million meals with rescued food.

Mr Godinho said the Abbotsford­ charity now hoped to expand its freezer and refrigeration systems.

“When we received support from the Feed Melbourne Appeal years ago we put the bulk of that into our kitchen and we aimed to cook a million meals, and now we’re doing much more than that but we’ve reached a bottleneck,” he said.

“So what we need in order to make even more use of our kitchen, surplus food and volunteers, is more refrigeration­.”

Leader Community News started Feed Melbourne with FareShare in 2009 to help divert good food away from landfill to where it is most needed.

Editor-in-chief John Trevorrow said Leader was committed to helping build stronger communities.

“The Feed Melbourne Appeal is one of the tangible ways we do that,” Mr Trevorrow said.

All donations of $2 and over are tax deductible.