Drawing inspiration from the recently celebrated volunteer week, we decided that we would put our Master Chef aprons on and volunteer at the FareShare kitchen. FareShare are one of our charity partners so it was a good opportunity to see firsthand how they are helping our community with the donations we provide on behalf of our clients and contractors.
On Thursday 25 th May we arrived at the kitchen with our corporate caps in hand and were escorted to a quick briefing session by the CEO, Marcus Godinho. Marcus spoke to us about the work the FareShare are involved in and how they have helped the community.
He also explained that it is FareShare’s mission to rescue surplus high-quality food that would otherwise go to waste and use it to prepare meals for Victorians doing it tough. They cook and distribute the food to food charities who then provide them to people in need.
There are 2 million Australians that will go hungry every year and at the same time, we waste over 200kg of quality food for every person in the nation. Knowing this, it’s easy to understand why Marcus and the FareShare team are so passionate about food waste. Even if we rescue a portion of that quality food, not only would we be feeding those Australians that may otherwise go without, we would also be saving food from landfill, and do our bit for the planet by helping to cut methane pollution and reduce the demand for new food products.
After the briefing, Marcus then led us into the kitchen to ‘scrub up’, with the help of Rosemary (Manager Volunteer Programs) and made sure we were all sanitised and raring to go.
Rosemary introduced us to Polly, our head chef who showed us how to make sausages rolls (a first for all of us) and away we went. With the help of the other volunteers, we made just over 1000 sausage rolls, packed quiches and filled trays with pastries for the next volunteer group to fill.
The staff and volunteers at FareShare were very committed to ensuring that all the food was prepared to the best standard possible. We had to ensure every sausage roll was packed with meat so no one would go hungry, every quiche was packed correctly and every tin we lined would be completely covered with pastry so they wouldn’t fall apart. It was great to see the dedication and passion in the team.
Learning about the FareShare values and how they have managed to make over 370,000 meals by rescuing surplus was inspiring, to say the least. It was very rewarding knowing that doing our bit to help FareShare would provide such joy to someone by something as simple as a sausage roll.
Contact us for more information on how we help FareShare and other charities through our IT Recruitment and Contractor Management services.
