What is Moving Feast?
Victoria’s food social enterprises have joined forces to create a pandemic food response that creates justice, sustainability and resilience. We’ve been growing, cooking and delivering meals and produce to the most vulnerable Victorians as part of the widespread food relief system. Together we’ve achieved so much and this is just the beginning!
Some troubling food for thought
Conservative estimates predict that over 10% of the population will be in need of emergency food assistance over the coming months. The demand could be over 250,000 meals a week. Unfortunately Melbourne’s fresh food system is not well equipped for this scale of crisis.
Although relatively small, Victoria’s food social enterprise sector is critical in the current crisis for two key reasons:
We create food security right across the food system from farm to table (farming, food relief, food rescue, distribution, social cohesion, therapy and occupational health and education)
We are major employers and service providers to vulnerable Victorians, every day doing heavy lifting for the government through our sustainable business models.
Essentially, if these enterprises are not supported and left to close, the system will get the dual shock of both social and environmental issues worsening.
There are three phases in our response:
Relief
Immediate food relief for the state’s most vulnerable people
Recovery
Mass production and distribution of food boxes and backyard growing kits
Rejuvenation
Creating integrated and resilient local food systems
Our hopes are by working together, we can keep our staff employed through the pandemic, create vital connections between farmers and food recipients, and lay the foundations for the next phases of our project. Stay up-to-date and follow our journey on Instagram here.