<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/dec/20/busiest-christmas-i-have-seen-families-turn-to-food-banks-in-australias-cost-of-living-crisis>
"Joanne Oliver has been serving meals to those in need for six years at One
Meal in Sydney’s Blacktown but she’s never seen anything like the current
demand.
“Numbers have been increasing quite dramatically,” Oliver says. “People are
often lining up before we even arrive.
“We have people reaching out saying they can’t put food on the table and
celebrate Christmas. They say they need to chose between the two – they can’t
do both.”
Across Australia many people are feeling the rising cost of living, including
rents, interest rates, groceries and bills, especially in the lead-up to
Christmas.
Oliver says this has coincided with a noticeable rise demand in recent months
at One Meal, a not-for-profit organisation that provides food, clothes and
support to people who are homeless, disfranchised or vulnerable.
“This has been the busiest Christmas I have seen,” Oliver says. “We’ve seen
some gradual increase each year but this year is another level.”
She says earlier this year there would be about 20 people coming for a meal
each week but this has risen steadily to 50 or 60, while more than 70 came to
the food bank’s Christmas party.
A lot of the regular visitors are elderly people but more recently “it’s mostly
younger families”, Oliver says. “And we are running out of food every week.”"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
