Foodbank’s record breaking food fight

Foodbank’s annual (August) Food Fight campaign has almost doubled its 2015 result, collecting enough donations for 13 million serves, to feed Australians in need.

Each year Food Fight aims at putting food insecurity front and centre for grocery shoppers, with Foodbank industry partners pledging a food donation for every one of their participating products purchased at Woolworths stores. This year these partners included brands SPC, Ardmona, Helga’s and Vetta.

The campaign was brought to life in Woolworths stores via point-of-sale material, in-store radio, product highlights in the store catalogues as well as in Fresh magazine.

Foodbank Australia CEO, Brianna Casey, said the support from the organisation’s industry partners and the public was overwhelming.

“It’s reassuring to see how much Australians want to help when they realise the enormity of the issue in our own backyard. Although largely out of sight, hunger is a growing blight on our community, with over two million Australians seeking food relief from charities each year – a third of whom are children,” said Casey.

“There is currently a 29 per cent shortfall in the amount of food needed to ensure no Australian seeking food relief is turned away empty handed, a deficit that the food donations resulting from Food Fight will help to remedy. We cannot thank the public, our food partners and agencies enough for their support, but the fight isn’t over and we hope everyone will continue to help us bridge the gap.”

The food donations generated by the Food Fight campaign will go towards feeding more than 500,000 people each month.

The number of serves achieved in this year’s campaign included: Enough Helga’s bread and Flora to make over 1.2 million sandwiches, enough Weet-Bix for a million nutritious breakfasts and enough Nescafé Blend 43 for 615,000 comforting cups of coffee.