Our McIntosh Street Community Pantry Launch
On Friday the 13th of September we celebrated the official launch of our new McIntosh Street Community Pantry and Warehouse in Airport West!
Our Pantry Launch cake, kindly donated by Ribbons and Bows Cakes
Helping Hands operates two Community Pantries, and with over 10,000 registered clients, we play an integral role in the provision of emergency food aid to families and individuals across Melbourne’s northwest who are struggling to make ends meet. it was important to us to keep the essential services our Airport West Community Pantry provides available throughout our relocation to McIntosh Street.
If you’ve been following our journey, you would know that in early 2023, we were faced with the challenge of having to relocate our site in Fullarton Road, Airport West and find a new home – somewhere that allowed us to stay local, had access to public transport and gave us at least an equivalent amount of space. After months of searching, we found our new home at 14 McIntosh Street, Airport West. The site had one existing building which we could turn into our Op Shop, but that was all it had. That meant that one of the biggest challenges in making sure our relocation a success was raising the money needed to build a new Community Pantry and Warehouse completely from scratch – to do that we needed to raise $500,000!
Instrumental to our success in raising the funds required was The Hon. Ben Carroll, Member for Niddrie and Deputy Premier. Ben is a long-time supporter of Helping Hands and understands the important role we play in the local community.
Ben’s efforts to understand our situation and raise awareness of the situation we faced, together with the support of The Hon. Bill Shorten, The Hon. Lizzie Blanthorn and The Hon. Danny Pearson, helped us successfully apply for a Community Support Fund grant – resulting in an amazing $350,000 in support of our pantry relocation and build.
Bendigo Bank in Keilor East then contributed an incredible $150,000 – the largest grant the bank has ever awarded, and the amount that got us to the $500,000 mark we needed to make our new shed and Community Pantry a reality.
To celebrate the opening of our new McIntosh Street Community Pantry we knew that we wanted to host an event that showcased our amazing achievement, while also putting it together “Helping Hands” style. For us, this meant an event that was hosted on site, entirely put together by our team – including all the catering and decorating! It was also important for us to use this event as an opportunity to recognise the huge community effort that made our dream a reality and ensured the ongoing future of the Community Pantry for local residents.
Demand for food aid is growing at an unprecedented rate, and we expect for the foreseeable future, numbers are going to continue to rise. We are currently supporting 150+ local families each day with access to fresh fruit and vegetables, pantry staples, toiletries, dairy, frozen produce, fresh bread and eggs.
Our clients include families, young people, single mothers and people affected by sudden or chronic health conditions, short or long term loss of employment, and many other circumstances that see members of our community needing to turn to us for support.
Our new McIntosh Street Community Pantry delivers the increased storage capacity and food delivery space we need to meet this increased demand head on, and we’re proud to be able to provide that for our community.
Helping Hands CEO Melanie Gill and The Hon. Ben Carroll cutting the ribbon to officially launch our new Community Pantry!