The Illawarra Food Hub at the Hope Centre in Warrawong celebrated the premier of a documentary made about the charity on Wednesday.
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It was created with Xander Productions as part of Community and Philanthropy Partnerships Week to highlight the work they do with food rescue and providing food to people in need.
The half hour film documents the journey of husband and wife team Jeff and Gally Dakers on their quest to create a centralised “Bunnings style” community pantry, giving the needy access to healthy and high quality foods.
Mr Dakers said they endured many challenges since the hub’s inception in 2007 (formerly Foodbarn) but in the end they had “fantastic results”.
“I think we come back to the basic heart of people of what we can give back into the community,” he said.
“Wollongong unfortunately has seen a lot of manufacturers close down, we have a lot of retrenched people access our service and the whole idea of what we try to do, is do things in a more efficient bigger and better way that’s going to help the community in a large capacity.”
At this stage distribution of the documentary is still being worked out but Mr Dakers is hoping it could make it onto television at some point and inspire others to get involved with the hub or create something similar in other regions.
The Illawarra Food Hub rescues in excess of 58 tonnes of food a week, serves multiple breakfast and school programmes; works in collaboration with many welfare agencies; and is run by more than 125 volunteers.
Overall, the project results in the delivery of more than 7000 meals each week to families in the Illawarra and surrounding areas. The food rescue is one aspect of the work of The Hope Centre.