Coburg Girl Guides collect more than 200kg of items for Foodbank

The initiative shown by Coburg Girl Guides will feed just under 400 Victorians doing it tough after they organise their own collection for Foodbank. And a little pop-up idea helped them do it.

The Coburg Girl Guides celebrate their donation with Alexa Viani and Daniel Parson from Foodbank. Picture: Ellen Smith

A grassroots effort run by a group of girls in Coburg will help feed almost 400 hungry mouths.

The Coburg Girl Guides began collecting food to hand to Foodbank in May after brainstorming ways to help their community.

Mairead and Ella, both 10, set up a pop-up collection hub in Brunswick, convincing passers-by to walk to their nearest supermarket to buy food to be handed over in the campaign.

“I hope it goes to people who need it the most,” Mairead said.

“We learned that making a difference is not that hard.”

Volunteers at the Yarraville warehouse will sort out food from the donation. Picture: Jay Town

The guides collected 217kg of food, enough for about 390 meals.

Group leader Samantha Bates said the girls decided on the idea of collecting food and mapped out logistics themselves to maximise their efforts.

“We want to thank all the people who donated,” she said.

“I’m just really proud of the girls for coming up with the initiative.”

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Foodbank chief executive David McNamara thanked the Girl Guides.

“The donated food is a vital resource, which is packed into thousands of emergency grocery hampers and distributed to vulnerable Victorians,” he said.

“We’d like to extend our thanks to the Coburg Girl Guides for choosing to support Foodbank. Thanks to their efforts we can continue to provide urgent food relief to people in need.”

Community groups are welcome to host food drives on behalf of Foodbank.