By Esther Lauaki
What is your connection to the Macedon Ranges?
I’m the co-ordinator of the Romsey Neighbourhood House and live in the Macedon Ranges in Benloch.
How long have you lived in the area?
I’ve lived there for 15 years.
Tell us how you came to be involved with the Romsey Neighbourhood House.
When we first moved up here from Melbourne, I was lucky enough to get involved in the Macedon Ranges council initiative called Celebrating Lancefield Together Project, which gave me invaluable connections with the wider community. I worked with the Lancefield Neighbourhood House with that project and about four years later the role as co-ordinator at Romsey came up and I took it.
What are you passionate about?
I’ve always felt passionate about being part of the wider community and that’s why my family and I made the tree change.
The Feed it Forward Movement is an initiative to be launched later this month by the Lancefield and Romsey neighbourhood houses. How was this movement born?
The Feed it Forward movement came out of a couple of community consultation sessions where we asked the community what they’d like to see happen in terms of food security and food services. We’d been trialling a food bank service at Romsey for the past three years … where we’ve provided food parcels for
people in need.
The movement involves the community in reducing waste and addressing the food issue in our community.
How important is this service to communities within the Ranges?
There is a real need for a service in the eastern corridor of the Macedon Ranges so that people don’t have to travel to get food. We found through the longer-running Kyneton Caring Communities project that 30 per cent of their population is having to travel into Kyneton town centre and pay petrol to access food supplies and if you can’t afford food, how can you afford petrol?
How do people get involved in the movement?
People can get involved by nominating themselves to be a generosity grower and growing an extra row of produce in their existing vegie patches to be donated to the initiative.
Gardeners will be able to donate their excess food or produce during our monthly harvest weeks which coincides with the Lancefield Farmers market and runs until the following Tuesday. That food will be made into meals for harvest luncheons, frozen meals for the foodbank and monthly community cook-ups where we will teach people to make low budget meals and freeze them.
The official launch of Feed it Forward will be held on October 31 at the Lancefield Mechanics Institute.
RSVP: 5429 6724 or bit.ly/2y6n33i
