Food drive to feed the need

As the festive season continues, Baw Baw Food Relief (BBFR) is asking community members to help "feed the need" by donating to its Christmas food drive.
Baw Baw Food Relief vice-president Mark Cleeman said the number of people coming through the food relief centre doors had increased significantly from last year.

"The demand is increasing all the time," Mr Cleeman said. "We're averaging at the moment between 40 and 50 families (coming in) per day. The number of mouths fed is more like 80 to 90 a day in this lead up to Christmas."
At the same time last year, BBFR was feeding about 40 to 50 people a day.
"We've had a regular 40 homeless people coming in to use our services, and we'll see that increase next year as well," Mr Cleeman said.
With the rising costs of food, Mr Cleeman said donations to BBFR had been hard to come by.
"We're getting some great donations, but we need a lot more," he said. "We're spending money (to buy food items in) that we shouldn't be needing to spend if we could get the donations in. Every little bit helps."
There are many ways of donating to BBFR this Christmas.
"People can donate by either ringing us, we can give them our bank details and they can do a bank transfer or they can come in (to the centre) and donate cans, non-perishables, but also Christmassy items," Mr Cleeman said.
The most convenient way of donating is by dropping something into the BBFR purple donation bins in Coles and Woolworths.
"When you do your own shopping if you can think of food relief and those in need and pop some items in the bin, that'd be brilliant," Mr Cleeman said.
"It would help us a lot. At the moment, those donations to the bins are almost non-existent."

Located at the front of the Coles and Woolworths supermarkets in Warragul and Drouin, the BBFR purple bins include a chart listing a variety of "wish-list" Christmas food items.
Some of the wish list items include Christmas puddings and cakes, custard, mince pies, chocolates, chips and crackers, biscuits, soft drinks and cordial, tinned ham and other tinned goods.
"Just because someone is struggling doesn't mean they can't have the same aspirations on Christmas Day to have a nice ham and some mince tarts and pudding and custard," Mr Cleeman said.
"Even if everything else around it hasn't been "normal", at least maybe Christmas Day could be."
More information about donations can be found at www.bawbawfoodrelief.org or by calling 5622 3891.