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Crates of sandwiches, fresh fruit and yoghurt are being delivered to a school in Melbourne’s west.
It’s a routine drop off with a big impact for scores of students – who come to school hungry each day. Movelle Primary Principal Karen Wood explains:
“We know that we're under a lot of financial hardship, not just in the western suburbs, but the whole of Victoria, but more so in our area. We have a lot of families that do face a lot of economic hardship. To eat healthier is more expensive at the moment for families. So, a lot of kids are having what I would class as junk in their lunchbox.”
Although 90 percent of Australian school students do bring their lunch, most of that is of poor nutritional value, according to recent studies.
What’s worse, this year many more students bring nothing for lunch at all, and some have also missed out on breakfast, too.
Principal Wood says demand for free food is rising.
“Definitely, it's probably increased about 40 per cent but we also do notice at the end of the week, not even a pay cycle, more a shopping cycle for families that Thursday and Friday are our busiest days because we know more students will turn up for that hungry.”
The free food is provided by Eat Up - a not-for-profit based in Melbourne.
It’s run by Lyndon Galea, who started making lunches for hungry students back in 2013, in his hometown of Shepparton.
“There was an article that sadly profiled the two schools that happened to be closest to where I lived, where kids were arriving without food from home and come lunchtime were simply missing out. And I was just totally shocked and I wanted to help. It felt personal happening in your hometown, and that's what I did. It was actually on my mum's kitchen table at that point and I pinched what I could from her cupboards, some bread, some cheese, some mushroom, some Vegemite, some cling wrap, bought some extra loaves and then together we made a hundred sandwiches for those first two schools.”
Since then Eat Up has grown exponentially, and now supports more than 900 schools across the country.
But Mr Galea says this year it’s harder to meet the rising demand.
“We've seen a steep increase in need, 49 per cent increase in fact across the country in the past financial year that we've been supporting these schools. And we hear directly from schools the cost of living crisis is really putting enormous pressure on families. If you don't pay the rent, you're out of the house. If you don't pay the electricity bill, the lights turn off. So, often it is food is the thing that's get cuts that gets cut most significantly. And sadly that's reflecting in kids arriving at school without any food.”
The scale of this operation is staggering – three-and-a half million meals delivered so far.
Of those, one million were dropped off in the past year alone! Mr Galea explains it would not be possible without an army of volunteers!
“It’s actually about 15,000 volunteers each year. So, it's massive. We have five delivery vans operating across the country. They each clock up upwards of 30,000 kilometres delivering all of those lunches to schools who need them. And I'm just so, so grateful for every individual, every team member, every volunteer, every donor. It's the ultimate collaboration.”
Among those proud to give their time, Davina Onas, the CEO of KCL Law in Melbourne.
“We were the very first corporate organization to get involved. So we started in 2016 and we've been having them ever since and we just love them. It's definitely team building. You sometimes can give back to the community by financially supporting an organisation, which we do as well. But to actually be involved in the sandwich making is an immediate effect and it's a really great feeling for everyone involved.”
At a lunchtime event, the law firm’s 20 volunteers turned out more than 2,000 sandwiches – all gratefully received by Eat Up CEO Elise Cook.
“There are kids coming to school hungry and we are there to feed those kids. And by feeding those kids, we're helping them to get the most out of their school day, improving their educational outcomes.”
And those educational outcomes are a focus for Dietitions Australia President Tara Diversi.
“If they don't eat lunch, there's a lot that they're missing out on and that can mean that they've got lower levels of concentration. When kids eat a healthy lunchbox, it means that they can focus throughout the day, but it also means that they can access the nutrients that they need. What we'd like to see within a lunchbox is things like vegetables and fruits and ranging those in different ways, using some of those homemade foods, things like using whole grain cereals and grains, but also some type of dairy.”
Fruit and Vegetable prices rose by 7.5 per cent in the 12 months to July Professor Rebecca Golley, from Flinders University says as a result families are struggling to afford a nutritious school lunch box.
“Children have about half of their food intake at school and we know that the majority of that is coming from high density, high fat, high sugar, high salt foods. And really we know that these are cheap foods.”
It’s one reason academics are calling for a national school-provided meals program, says Professor Danielle Gallegos from Queensland University of Technology.
“Australia is one of the few countries in the world that is not providing a national school meals program. If we don't do this we're going to start seeing children still not being able to meet their full potential. Eventually our economic productivity will go down if we are going to be at the forefront internationally, we are going to have start thinking about what a school meals program looks like and not just for those families that are doing it tough, but for all families.”
Many countries already provide students with daily healthy meals. Eat Up Founder Lyndon Galea, is on an international fact-finding mission this month, to find out more.
“I'm very fortunate to have received to Churchill Fellowship, to travel to countries where an in-school model is the norm for them and they're global leaders in that respect. So I'm very lucky to be visiting Japan, Italy, the UK and the USA in the upcoming couple of weeks to learn from what they do in the hopes that we can support Australia's highest needs kids in a similar manner.”
