FareShare

Footy-loving FareShare Melbourne chefs Tania and Alex got into the spirit of footy finals this week – using a (very heavy) leg of ham. Thankfully, they decided to stick to their day jobs and were soon cooking this succulent ham into free, delicious meals for people who need them most.

In solidarity with our FareShare Brisbane teammates, plenty of the FareShare Melbourne team will be roaring today 🦁❤

A big FareShare thanks to the team at In2quilting in Kilmore for generously donating funds and 118kgs of pasta, rice, and other essential ingredients for Emma and our talented chefs to transform into free, comforting meals for people doing it tough! Yesterday, our chefs and volunteers cooked the donated rice into these scrumptious Golden Wok dumpling meals with mixed vegetables 🤩

FareShare was honoured to be the Purposeful Partner at this year’s CAPA - Centre for Aviation Airline Leader Summit Australia Pacific 2024.

As part of this wonderful partnership, the team from CAPA spent a morning at the FareShare Brisbane kitchen, where they spread their wings and helped us prepare more than 3,000 comforting, nutritious meals.

At the summit, which brought together industry leaders in aviation and tourism, SecondBite | FareShare's Matilde and Jackie had a blast networking and talking all things FareShare.

All up, FareShare raised around $10k from this great partnership, including $4,200 from the sale of a piece of art that was made live at the gala dinner by artist Brad Blaze.

A huge thank you to wonderful hosts Brisbane Airport Corporation and Brisbane Economic Development Agency, to everyone we spoke to and/or who supported us during the summit, and to CAPA for choosing us as your Purposeful Partner. We absolutely loved being a part of it ❤️

Check out FareShare volunteers Amy, Kate, Jennie, Jill, and Gheong (and Marisa in the school's kitchen behind) rocking their colourful new gaiters!

These versatile, reusable gaiters are a fantastic alternative to our single-use hairnets and can even be worn as neck warmers—perfect for staying cosy in winter.

We're reducing waste by switching to reusable gaiters and taking another small step toward a more sustainable future at FareShare.

If you're a FareShare Abbotsford volunteer, you can grab your gaiter for just $2 next time you're in.

7 million meals!! That’s how many free, nutritious meals the FareShare Brisbane kitchen has cooked for people who need them most – in less than 6 years! If you have volunteered with us, visited us for a corporate volunteering shift, donated or raised funds for us, shared one of our social media posts, spread the word about us, or supported us in any other way, we thank you all. We could not have achieved this wonderful milestone without you.

Our 7 millionth meal was this delectable, homestyle beef stroganoff with mashed potato, which our chefs and volunteers cooked with care yesterday.

It’s been an action-packed couple weeks for our kitchen gardens team…

🦺 At Dingley Village, our pump house slab has been poured, marking another significant step forward for our new farm site!
👩‍🌾 Rebecca can’t wait to try out these new tools, including line trimmers, pressure washers, and wet/dry vacuums, which the legends at Total Tools heavily discounted for us.
🌷 Sweet Peas are in full bloom at our Abbotsford kitchen garden.
🌱 Haydn excitedly holds up a vegetable seedling delivery. These were kindly donated to us by Fairbanks Seed and Lefroy Valley.

Life’s ups and downs happen to all of us. Perhaps you or someone you know might be struggling right now. Asking ‘are you OK?’ may help someone before they’re in crisis or help them through it. This R U OK Day, we’d like to remind everyone that every day can be a day to ask this important question.

Today especially, we hope our homestyle meals can provide a moment of comfort and warmth to people in our community who may be struggling right now.

And if you need immediate support, please reach out to Lifeline 24/7 on 13 11 14. Other services can also be found on the ruok.org.au website.

Photo credit: Adrian Lander Photography. R U OK?

We’re informally calling last week 'Melbourne Grammar School takeover week’, such was their level of support for FareShare. Early on, their junior school dropped off a HUGE food drive haul: 365kgs of pasta, rice, oil, spices, and tinned items – totally dwarfing our warehouse manager Ray!

We then welcomed two senior school classes into our Schools Kitchen. They learnt about food insecurity before plating up thousands of meals, chopping meat and vegetables, decanting sauces, folding aprons, cleaning, and much more.

A big FareShare thank you to all the Melbourne Grammar students, teachers and community who supported us.

Lamb chops + roast potatoes + a lentil and vegetable braise + roast cherry tomatoes = just one of the many delicious recipes our Abbotsford chefs and volunteers cooked this week. Thousands of these comforting, homestyle meals were lovingly prepared, and are already on their way to people in our community who need them most 🚛❤

On this International Day of Charity, we take a moment to honour and celebrate the incredible work of the hundreds of charities and community groups we collaborate with.

Together, we’ve been providing free, nutritious meals, feeding dignity and wellbeing to those who need it most.

Your dedication to supporting vulnerable Australians is truly inspiring. Every meal we share is a step toward building stronger, more resilient communities.

Thank you for being an essential part of FareShare's mission. Happy International Day of Charity!



Hope City Mission
Aborigines Advancement League
Make A Difference Dingley Village
Geelong Food Relief Centre

This week is Include A Charity Week, a social change campaign that encourages us to ask a question that can feel a little awkward...

Have you considered including a charity in your will?

Many people don’t realise it, but Gifts in Wills account for 25% of all charity revenue in Australia. By choosing to become a Friend of a FareFuture and including FareShare in your will, you can leave a lasting legacy of compassion and hope that will provide free, nutritious meals to vulnerable Australians for years to come.

If you’d like to learn more about how your bequest can make a life-changing difference, visit www.fareshare.net.au/bequests . Or if you're ready to leave a gift in your will, simply speak with your solicitor or head to our page on Gathered Here, Australia's most trusted free online wills platform: https://www.gatheredhere.com.au/c/fareshare

Big thanks to Kylie (left) and the Haar's Nursery team for sharing valuable insights into modern propagation techniques with the FareShare kitchen gardens team, and for the donated seedlings. Our team left feeling inspired and excited to grow even more delicious, nutritious veggies for our meals this spring!

This excitement grew with the delivery of over 100 cubic meters of premium compost and topsoil to our Moorabbin kitchen garden last week; thanks Clyde Compost. The additional soil is a huge boost, allowing us to rejuvenate our beds and expand our growing area ahead of the spring planting season 🌱🌞

For Tony Dwyer, seeing SecondBite and FareShare join forces was the perfect match. That’s because he has been volunteering at both food relief organisations for years!

Tony retired in 2017 and took up volunteering soon after. He registered for FareShare, but we had a wait list, so he registered for SecondBite and got in there first. When FareShare reached out to him, he decided to keep both.

Our volunteering legend Tony spends his Tuesdays in the SecondBite warehouse in Heidelberg and Thursdays in the FareShare kitchen.

Fresh, rescued produce ready to be transformed into nutritious meals!

Our Corporate Partnerships Manager Jackie captured these vibrant tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, and cauliflower that will soon be cooked with care into thousands of free, ready-to-eat meals by our amazing Brisbane chefs and volunteers.

At FareShare, we place a strong emphasis on quality and nutrition, ensuring that every meal we prepare is as wholesome as it is delicious. Because everyone deserves access to nutritious food, no matter their circumstances.

Meet cousins Merv and Chris. By day, they work at a tech company. By night, they cook their famous Eighteen Thousand Islands satay sauce – adapted from their Indonesian grandmother’s recipe (if you were in Melbourne between 2004-2012, you may have tasted it in their former Sataybar restaurants).

Merv and Chris have been donating their satay sauce to FareShare for years. But it was only on a recent visit that they got to experience our Abbotsford kitchen for the first time. And as fate would have it, we had some of their satay sauce waiting to be opened and decanted!

Our chefs love this sauce for its mouthwatering, tangy flavour. Here’s chef Dean cooking a delectable satay beef with vegetables dish, which was served with rice. Thousands of these meals are currently out in our community, helping to provide a warm, comforting feed to people struggling right now. Thank you, Merv and Chris, for your food donations and for volunteering with us.

The boys are back in… FareShare’s Brisbane kitchen! These lovely students from Marist College Ashgrove’s Environment Club returned earlier this week to drop off 534kgs of rice from a food drive they ran, as well as a generous $1,400 cheque from a school fundraiser. They also joined our chefs and volunteers in the kitchen, where they helped prepare 1,639 free, nutritious meals for people doing it tough right now.

If you would like to run a food drive or fundraiser for FareShare, find out more here: https://www.fareshare.net.au/fundraise-for-fareshare/

This week, FareShare Brisbane received a call from a meal recipient who wanted to let us know how much our meals have meant...

“For years, I was a Chef, but after having significant health issues and receiving medical treatment, I have really struggled to eat anything. My support worker went to a local homeless expo and brought back some FareShare meals to try.

“I was lucky enough to get a few apple crumble meals and they have been the only food I can stomach while going through treatment. The apple crumble is delicious, filling, and does not make me feel sick. Thank you, FareShare!”

We’re so happy that our apple crumble with cinnamon, oats, and mixed dried fruit and nuts is proving such a hit, and we thank this lovely person for their kind words. Everyone at FareShare wishes you a very speedy recovery ❤️

Last week, team members from the combined SecondBite | FareShare Fundraising and Comms team rolled up their sleeves and helped out in the FareShare kitchen. New and old teammates from both organisations had a ball working together, alongside our chefs and regular volunteers, to prepare 853 delicious pumpkin gnocchi meals in a bacon and tomato sauce, and 750 homestyle, winter-warming chickpea curry meals with rice. The team also sealed 350 more nutritious, single-serve meals and labelled 600 meal sleeves. A valiant effort by all involved!

At FareShare, every meal is a labour of love, cooked with care by our dedicated chefs and volunteers.
Here’s a delicious roast pork with fresh veggies and gravy, lovingly prepared by our Brisbane volunteer Geoff.

For those doing it tough, a nourishing meal can make all the difference. We're proud to cook thousands of these meals every day, providing dignity and well-being to Australians in need.

Our kitchen gardens team and crops are loving this purple patch of weather. Clearly, the surrounding flora at the Baguley farm is too - aren't these early spring blossoms stunning 🌸😍?!

What an honour to have been selected as Kew Golf Club’s charity partner for the second year running ⛳️!

A couple weeks ago, the community-led club hosted a Charity Card Day that raised $8,580 in support of FareShare. This generous donation will enable our chefs and volunteers to cook even more free, nutritious meals for people who need them most. A wholehearted thank you from the FareShare team, Kew Golf Club.

A special shout out to the Women's Committee, led by Helen Irvine (who also volunteers at FareShare), for their dedication and hard work in organising the event, and to the Kew Golf Club staff for their professionalism and assistance on the day.

If you would like to fundraise for FareShare, find out more here: https://www.fareshare.net.au/fundraise-for-fareshare/

A year ago, Grace was looking to volunteer somewhere that combined her love of food with her desire to give back. She discovered FareShare in Brisbane—and the connection was immediate.

In between balancing her studies and her job at a pizza restaurant, Grace helps our chefs cook free, nutritious meals for people who need them most every week. She particularly likes the friendly team and the relaxed atmosphere, a refreshing contrast to the intensity of her academic and work life.

We conclude National Student Volunteer Week by acknowledging Grace and all our inspiring, dedicated student volunteers!

Our schools and volunteer coordinator Pauline (middle) attended yesterday’s National Student Volunteer Week volunteer expo at The University of Melbourne. She was assisted by regular FareShare kitchen volunteers Shikha and Edellyne.

These three superstars chatted all things FareShare and handed out fruit and bookmarks to a plethora of enthused, altruistic students. Six students signed up to volunteer with us on the spot and dozens more scanned the QR code. We’re thrilled to see so many students living up to this year’s NSVW theme: