Yass Vine Community FoodCare offers low-cost and emergency food assistance, helping local families access nutritious staples when times are tough, run through the Yass Vine Church.
This year, they are looking to raise $5,000 to help local families over Christmas. To do this, they have decided to collect cans and bottles and cash them in as a way of trying to raise money at low cost to others. These can either be dropped off at The Vine Community Foodcare at 66 Lead Street, Yass, on Thursdays between 10:00 am and 5:00 pm or on arrangement, they can be picked up.
Pastor Garry Brown told the Yass Valley Times, “Probably 12 or 15 years ago, we wanted to see if there was a need in the community for food assistance and for supplies for people around the Yass Valley, so we put our toe in the water and we made an arrangement with Food Bank in Sydney and we decided we would open for a few hours with non-perishable goods and any perishables that could be donated to us and whatever we could buy from Food Bank in Sydney.
“The response was quite amazing, and it seemed that people really did need help, not only to pay their exorbitant electricity bills and all their other bills, but they also needed help to put food on the table and to cover the costs of a lot of personal items.
“As a result of that, we used to have church in the shed facility on a Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. We used to set up, put all the chairs down, put up a bunch of tables, get whatever we could, and then we opened the doors for about four hours on a Thursday. That grew and grew, and then we decided we needed more volunteers, so we opened it up and had people from all walks of life come in as volunteers. The clientele grew and grew and grew, so what we decided to do was we decided to make people members and we gave them a member number and it cost them $2 to join, and so over the last 12 to 15 years, we have grown and now we have a Tuesday team that receives the pallets of food that we can get through Food Bank in Sydney, a Wednesday team that goes and does the rounds of all three of the very generous supermarkets in town or the stores like Aldi, Woolworths and IGA and then we have a Thursday team now.
“Over that time, we have helped over 880 families with that food.
“What we do to maintain dignity and also to make people feel a part of it, they can come in and do a small $8 shop for which they get about $30 worth of goods, and once they’ve done that, then all of their fruit, their vegetables, their meat, bread, milk, and anything else we’ve got, we give it to them free. People can come in, they can have a cup of coffee, they can have a chat, they can do a little shop or a big shop, whatever they can do, and then they get all of those other goods that I mentioned for free.
“We have been doing that now for a long time, and it’s been a great service to the community.
“On top of that, we do what they call ERs, which are emergency packs. If someone comes in and they don’t have even a dollar, we will give them a good pack that will tide them over for several weeks and then, associated with that every year, we put on a Christmas function for people in Yass. We call it the Yass Appreciation Christmas dinner; this time, it’s lunch. This year it is on Saturday, the 13th of December, at lunchtime, and everything is free.
“We put on kids’ games or jumping castles and things like that. We give new gifts to 15-year-olds and below, and as many hampers as we can give out, and we have been doing that for probably 12 years now, and it’s all completely free because we love this community and we love to show good Christian grace, love and generosity to this community.
“One of the key guys in the Food Care was Pastor Colin and his wife, Ruth, and Pastor Colin suffered a fatal heart attack on Saturday morning, and that was totally unexpected. The future of Food Care is going to be continual, and we do it in honour of a man who gave a lot of his time and life to refine the community food care service that we provide.
“People can donate, or they are welcome to come down and take advantage of the services we offer. “I also give a call out to our fantastic volunteers that come from all sections of the community, not just church people, we’ve probably got 25 volunteers.
“I’ve been in this community for a long time now, and I’m just about to finish 52 years and eight months of Naval service. I’m finishing up as a Commander who looks after the Reserves in the Navy.
“I’ve been ministering in this church for 25 years, but all that time, I’ve been in the Navy as well.”
– Kellie Stanfield
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