Providing healthy nutritious meals and a range of human services to the homeless, destitute, impoverished and underprivileged people.
One Meal – It Makes a Difference is a not-for-profit, community organisation that helps to feed, clothe and support the homeless, disenfranchised, vulnerable and at-risk members of our local communities.
One Meal was founded in December 2014 when a group of friends came together to give back to the community with a one-off street service at Green Park in Sydney, providing a meal to people in need at Christmas. A month later they were back again, and One Meal – It Makes a Difference was born.
One Meal now provides hundreds of meals to people in need every week. Regular weekly community meals serve up delicious hot dinners for over 500 patrons across Sydney, including Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown (Kingsgrove and Riverwood), Sydney City (Darlinghurst and Surry Hills), Northern Beaches (Manly and Narraweena), and Sutherland Shire (Cronulla, Miranda and Sutherland).
During the COVID-19 lockdown, many charities had to stop operations due to social distancing protocols and risk. One Meal, however, was able to implement new processes and keep services going to the community who were more in need than ever before, because of the lockdown.
The demand for food relief services continues to grow, highlighting Sydney’s “hidden hunger crisis” – where people going without proper food are not just the homeless or unemployed, but increasingly ‘ordinary’ people whose situation dramatically changes. These changes are often due to illness, death of a breadwinner, family breakup and/or fleeing domestic violence, and the abandoned or isolated elderly.
Those needing help can also include people who struggle to access support services due to personal challenges, such as restricted mobility, mental health (including anxiety - e.g. agoraphobia), challenging family situations (incl. DV fears), physical limitations, isolation, communication/language/culture barriers, and many other challenges.
Local communities can get involved by:
Providing cooked meals, breakfast items or food to the service each week.
Volunteering at a service for a few hours on a Saturday night in Darlinghurst or Surry Hills and serving food. Different locations have services on different nights.
Donations of clothing, blankets and canned foods are always welcome.
Help fundraise for One Meal.
FB: @onemeal14
IN: @onemeal14