Corio fun day to raise crucial funds for food insecurity

AN upcoming family fun day in Corio will aim to raise funds and highlight the effect of food insecurity in Geelong’s northern suburbs this Saturday.

The Corio Foodshare Fun-Day Fundraiser returns to St Andrew’s Church this weekend with a host of small business stalls, food trucks, and raffle prizes on offer for the community, raising crucial funds for the church’s in-house food share program.

Corio Foodshare volunteer and Fun-Day organiser Bianca Cotone urged all community members to consider attending this year’s market-style event.

“This year’s fun day is quite similar to last year’s, but this year we’ve moved the event from its regular June slot to November with the hope of the event running of a nice, warm day opposed to a potentially wet, cold one,” Ms Cotone said.

“We have some outside activations involved this time round which we didn’t have last year; things like food trucks are among the new additions this year.

“We can’t wait for visitors to enjoy them and of course pets are allowed.”

All proceeds from the event will go towards St Andrew’s Foodshare program.

The Foodshare program provides Greater Geelong residents in the northern suburbs battling food insecurity monthly food parcels to households battling food insecurity.

To be eligible for the free service, residents must have a Centrelink Card, and live within the Foodshare’s service range (Corio, North Shore, Bell Post Hill, Lovely Banks, some of North Geelong).

Last week, the Foodshare gifted residents with 49 food parcels, contributing to the present total of 149 parcels in November alone.

The Foodshare has donated more than 200 parcels in each of the three previous months.

“For us we were an essential service during the pandemic, and there was definitely an increase in our customer base due to the fact a lot of people were unemployed,” Ms Cotone said.

“What we’re seeing now is a whole lot more people struggling simply because the cost of living is going up and it’s actually higher than what we saw during the pandemic.

“I don’t think I expected this to happen, I thought things might go back to normal, but it hasn’t, thankfully we have a few extra volunteers making the workload more manageable.

“Our current volunteer group is roughly 10 shifted through each week.”

The Corio Foodshare Fun-Day Fundraiser at St Andrew’s Church, 104 Bacchus Marsh Road, Corio will run from 10am-3pm.