Wodonga's Birallee Neighbourhood House is giving away hot soup lunches today and for the next two Thursdays, but coordinators say a greater array of people are seeking help due to rising costs of living.
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"Anyone and everyone" is welcome for the free Thursday lunch between 12.30pm and 1.30pm at 39 Emerald Avenue in West Wodonga, said Neighbourhood House coordinator Amanda Skrypczak.
"We're finding a real need in the community," she said.
"With social isolation people aren't confident in coming out because of COVID, so we just want people to know that they can come back, have a chat and have a meal with other people in the community."
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Assistant coordinator Katie Testa said the community service was seeing a greater variety of people, whereas previously most people were from a low socio-economic background.
"We're seeing the elderly, we're seeing middle aged, we're seeing low income, we're seeing people who've lost their jobs due to COVID," she said.
"We're seeing people who can't find rentals due to COVID and they're paying $300 a week living in caravan parks and motels.
"We see a vast variety of people from the community, it used to be one stereotyped part of the community, but it's not any more."
Ms Skrypczak said they hadn't yet seen the impacts of Tuesday's Reserve Bank of Australia rate increase in the amount of people seeking support. "Not yet, it's more the cost of living, so your electricity, your gas, they're going up," she said.
"As an emergency food provider, we've gone from four days a week cooking now to five so that's a a big increase.
"We're hoping to do about 26,000 meals cooking this year and over the past five years we've done over a 100,000 meals for the community, so you can actually see the growth over the last five years and yes we do exceed most years of what we cooked the year before."
Up to 25 people are expected to come together for soup each Thursday.
The coordinators say there is opportunity to expand the soup program if the need is there.
For more information on today's soup call the House on 02 6059 2590 or email admin@birhouse.com.au
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Victoria Ellis
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
Victoria Ellis grew up on the Border and loves reporting for her home community. She is a University of Wollongong Journalism graduate. In 2018 Victoria was awarded the Bruce Gordon Scholarship for Journalism and completed a 10 week internship with WIN News Illawarra. In 2019 she was awarded The Border Mail's Cameron Thompson Scholarship, where she completed a three week internship, before taking up ongoing employment in 2021.
