Demand on the PICAL food relief pantry has skyrocketed, with the emergency food relief program seeing more people now on a daily basis than at the peak of the Covid pandemic.

The escalating costs of living are hitting many of Phillip Island’s more vulnerable families, and the call has gone out for community assistance.

“The emergency food relief Pantry is now assisting groups of people who have never before needed help,” said PICAL Manager Greg Thompson.

“Whereas most of our previous customers were long-term unemployed people and those struggling with other chronic financial problems, we are now seeing totally new groups of ‘working poor’ and even ‘working homeless’ people who have never before needed help putting food on the table.

“Our numbers of visitors to PICAL’s food pantry have jumped to over 200 people each week.

“Most of these visitors are mums with families at home, so we are now feeding almost 350 people every week; many of them are children.”

The PICAL pantry issues hampers with enough emergency food rations to last one person for a week, so a family of four will receive four hampers each week. These hampers include fresh produce, packaged staple foods such as flour pasta and rice, and frozen complete meals cooked by another team of PICAL volunteers.

“This equates to more than 250,000 meals every year that we are now providing, but in addition to increases in demand, we are also finding that our supply lines are now tightening too,” Greg said.

“We gather leftover edible fresh produce from all surrounding supermarkets in Cowes each day and from the very generous local butcher at San Remo who makes a large weekly donation of meats.

“We also order a pallet-load of packaged staple foods from Food Bank Australia every fortnight, but these suppliers now have less to provide as they too are facing tough times themselves.

“We also used to propagate large amounts of our own fresh vegetables in our old community garden, but we decommissioned the old garden 18 months ago when we moved sites, and we are still hoping to gain occupancy of the new Phillip Island Community Garden at the end of June,” he added.

“However, it will still be another few months after that date before we can harvest the first crop from the new garden.”

Bags and funds

The PICAL food relief program has also been hit by the inability of the Phillip Island and San Remo chapter of Boomerang Bags to operate at full capacity.

The PISR Boomerang Bags group made PICAL’s food hamper bags from leftover fabrics. However, they also lost their base at the former PICAL site, and have been waiting to resume their operations at the old CFA site at Blue Gum Reserve Cowes, when it becomes available.

“In the interim, the Boomerang Bags group has been trying to survive from a bungalow in the back yard of the group’s coordinator, but this has caused numbers of ‘Bag Lady’ volunteers and outputs of hampers to decline significantly,” Greg said.

Hearing of PICAL’s need for more food hamper bags, Member for Bass, Jordan Crugnale has donated 500 ‘Community at Heart’ bags.

“The message on the bags is about having our community at heart and looking out for each other, and PICAL’s food pantry exemplifies this spirit,” said Jordan.

“It is also a way to help out our much loved and cherished Boomerang Bags volunteers, until normal supply can resume.

Greg is hoping the community can support the ongoing food relief program with cash donations.

“PICAL’s food relief program is not funded on an ongoing basis, and costs us around $40,000 each year,” he explained.

“Although many fresh vegetables and meats are gathered at no cost from local outlets, we still need to purchase the discounted Food Bank Australia packaged supplies, and ingredients for our Cooking Program.

“The money to pay for these things comes from community donations, any grants we can secure, and our own fundraising activities.

“Everyone involved in our food relief program is a volunteer and none of this money goes to administrative overheads.”

Greg said the food bank was also seeking donations of any spare unopened packaged goods sitting at the back of household pantries, provided they are still within their used-by dates.

If you can help in any way then cash, home-grown fresh produce and packaged goods donations can be left at PICAL, at 16 Warley Avenue Cowes, every weekday between 9am and 3pm.

Cash donations can also be made online at www.pical.org.au/supportus (scroll down to click on the Try Booking link) or go directly to www.trybooking.com/au/donate/emergencyfoodrelief)