Corangamite Food Bank serving our community

06 Nov Corangamite Food Bank serving our community

With another Annual General Meeting (AGM) under our belt, it is always a good opportunity to reflect on the year that has been.

For Corangamite Food Bank it has been a very big year indeed!

The Camperdown and District Community House manages and operates the Corangamite Food Bank service, providing food relief to residents of the Corangamite Shire. We are the only Food Bank Victoria registered agency for this form of food relief in Corangamite, and we are also supported by Western District Food Share, as our regional Food Share Hub.

The majority of food items and essential non-food items are purchased, not donated, via our main supplier Foodbank Victoria, with some purchased from Aldi and other supplies donated by local supermarkets and Western District Foodshare. We self-fund all operational costs, including transport, flat pack boxes, pest control, and volunteer training. This service does not receive recurrent funding, which means we operate on grants and donations only at this time.

In 2024-2025 we received considerable donations and support from local community groups totalling $5,450.00 in local donations secured for that financial year. Most notably: Lions Club of Simpson and District, Cobden Rotary, Cobden Uniting Church Op Shop and Terang Community Op Shop all donated $1,000.00, Other donations included: $450.00 Camperdown Theatre Company, $300.00 Cobden Art Group,$200.00 Corangamite U3A, and a number of anonymous donations totalling $1,450.00. These donations have allowed the service to continue to meet the growing need for food relief across the region. It is wonderful to see local individuals and groups supporting a local service in this way. We continue to break our own records for the amount of food hampers distributed each week, and while food hampers do not solve everything, they can help alleviate some of the immediate financial pressures being experience across the community.

One of our goals in 2024-2025 was to increase the reach of this service across Corangamite by identifying and partnering with new community distribution partners, with a specific focus on currently under-serviced areas of the region. We are happy to report that we have secured new distribution partners in Derrinallum, Skipton, Terang and Timboon.

We are also exploring other ways we can partner with other community groups and services to have a more comprehensive, collective and positive response to food insecurity in our region.

A goal for the Corangamite Food Bank in 2025-2026 is to secure recognition of the service within the emergency management and planning for Corangamite. We are advocating for this service to be recognised at the higher levels involved in emergency planning, response and recovery. We are currently liaising with Corangamite Shire, Red Cross and Western District Foodshare and hope to see more formal plans adopted in 2026 that include Corangamite Food Bank as a service provider during and following an emergency.

Our small and dedicated volunteer team prepare non-perishable food hampers that are collected by our registered Distribution Partners who then distribute the hampers to their clients and/or community members in need.

The ongoing dedication to this service by our volunteer team, and their flexibility, have allowed this essential service to grow and improve and continue to meet the needs of our community through rapid changes, challenges and increasing demand. Unfortunately, the need for food relief has only increased in 2024-2025 and we anticipate this trend to continue. We are committed to ongoing quality improvement of this service and securing the financial support to ensure we can continue to grow and meet community need.

In 2026 we will continue to increase service visibility and access across the region to ensure everyone has access to food in our community.