Our Daily Bread to host Christmas fundraiser amid concerns over looming development
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Our Daily Bread, Merri-bek’s largest food-relief program, will hold its annual Christmas fundraiser tea this Sunday at the Greek Orthodox Parish of the Presentation of Our Lord in Coburg, as leaders warn the service is entering its most challenging period yet.
The event, held each year to fund Christmas meals, hampers and support packs, will also introduce Merri-bek’s new mayor to the community. Organisers say they hope the visit will help shine a spotlight on the scale of need in the area — and the strain the charity is under.
“Our Daily Bread is entirely self-funded. We’ve never had success with government grants,” manager Sophie Koutoulas said. “We’re struggling to meet the need of the people we cook for, all on a volunteer-based program.”
She said the volunteer-based nature of the program has become increasingly burdensome as demand grows.
“Our volunteers are working more than paid employees would,” she said. “My mum had to come out of retirement — after ten years — to be our head chef because we don’t have the money to pay a professional cook. And we’re cooking 250 meals a day.”
“A crucial turning point”
Koutoulas said the organisation is at a “crossroad”, with both demand rising sharply and its facilities at risk. Their storage site across the road from the parish — leased from council — is privately funded and will be demolished within a year as part of a major redevelopment.
“These high-rise apartments will bring a whole new catchment of people into a very small area,” she said. “That means more need, more pressure, and if we don’t grow with that development, we won’t cope.”
Although the program provides 250 meals a day and supports public-housing residents, asylum seekers, refugees, individuals with illness, homeless clients, disabled youth and people exiting prison, Koutoulas said no level of government provides financial assistance.
She noted that the most recent major food-relief grant — around $300,000 — went to Merri-bek City Council, not local food-relief providers. “We asked to partner in the grant and were told no,” she said. “Yet we’re the key food-relief agency they refer to.”
While the program operates from a Greek Orthodox parish, Koutoulas stressed that “Greeks are less than 10 per cent” of those it helps.
“Ninety per cent of the people we’re feeding are the broader community — migrants, refugees, homeless people, asylum seekers, people with illness, public-housing residents, and people referred by social workers or Centrelink,” she said. “We’re even helping populations that other charities haven’t reached.”
The charity also runs addiction recovery support, prison outreach, and a new employment initiative for disabled youth, providing training, work skills and paid employment.
“We want to be heard so we can promote the needs of our charity,” she said. “We’re on the frontier now. If they don’t let us grow together with this development, we won’t cope with all the need.”
Church warns of “detrimental” impact
Rev Fr Leonidas Ioannou, parish priest and director of Our Daily Bread, said the upcoming development threatens both the church and the program.
“We’re feeding people within council, without council support,” he said. “And now the one building we rent from them is going to be knocked down as well. They’re chopping our hands off. I can’t feed people if my hands are cut.”
Fr Ioannou said the charity has consistently welcomed councillors and MPs at its events, but “it has never translated into material help”.
“This is something Merri-bek should be boasting about,” he said. “It’s something they should be proud of, not indifferent to.”
Despite the challenges, he emphasised that the program survives through “yiayiathes and papouthes, big business donors and CEOs who come and volunteer alongside the poor”.
“We share Christ’s love with those in need,” he said. “They don’t have to be Christian. They don’t have to be Orthodox. They don’t have to be Greek — in fact, most of them are not.”
Sunday’s Christmas tea will honour volunteers, recognise supporters, and showcase the program’s achievements and new initiatives, including its disability employment program.
Organisers say they also hope it will be a turning point.
“The new mayor has inherited us — and inherited a Merri-bek that is on the brink of a huge logistical explosion,” Koutoulas said. “We’d love to partner with her. But we need support to survive what’s coming.”
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
