Newsletter for the Rotary Club of Greater Geraldton - Issue No.: 780 Issue Date: 15 Apr, 2024

Guest Speaker - Jamie O'Brien from Foodbank Geraldton introduced by Geoff Watson

Jamie grew up & went to school here in G'ton. Left & went to Perth – was a bad Uni student.

Had a variety of jobs after giving up on uni... Boarding House master, Kitchen hand, Flour mill labourer…ended up in Tom Price , very late 90’s. After 13 yrs up there moved back to Gton. Been with Foodbank for nearly 6 yrs. Married to Kath & has 4 kids.

Foodbank (herein FB) is a not for profit organisation.

It sources food for those who are food insecure. Jamie's explanation was an analogy with the Fremantle Dockers - the cupboard is bare.

They get the majority of their dry product from Supermarkets. All products have a 'best before' date. FB get products that Supermarkets decide they can no longer sell. There is generally a 6 month buffer on these products.

Supermarket chains are Eastern States based, so dry product has been difficult to source, especially in the wake of droughts, fires and now Covid.

Only have food at the moment for the short term. Jobseeker has helped, but when those people run out of $'s they will come back to FB.

Low and no income earners are the main users of FB.

Various relief agencies can recommend people to FB and provide proof of need. This proof of need is good for six months.

For $50 to $60 dollars a user of FB gets the equivalent of $200 in a normal supermarket.

All fruit and vegetables at FB are seconds, i.e. too big, too small or blemished. Difficult times ahead for fruit and vegetables as Covid means there are virtually no backpackers who normally do the harvest.

FB runs a couple of programs:

School Breakfast- run at 24 schools across MW/Gascoyne. Up to seventy kids at larger schools arrive at school not having had breakfast.

Healthy Foods For All - making healthy choices around food. Led by dieticians, nutritionists teaching people how to make better choices around diet and cooking.

Christmas is a tough time as many people buy presents and so go without food. FB usually finds that they go through over 100 kilos of food per day. The variety of food that comes from donations is a welcome injection - especially from Rotary's Cans for Christmas.

While foods like custard and tinned hams are welcome at Christmas, the ones that are preferred for people using FB are stews and chunky soups.

Pre-covid FB Geraldton was providing 950,000 meals a year and seeing up to 450 people per week.

Questions from Ian Taylor, Kerryn Horo, Grant Woodhams and Raj Mavath

Guest Speaker thanks by Jim Dillon.