In a silver lining to this year's pandemic, many Bendigo organisations say they have strengthened their systems supporting their most vulnerable communities.
In April, Abhishek Awasthi got a call from a community leader about a group of Indonesian temporary workers stuck in Rochester who had lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
"They ended up in a caravan park with no support around them and no access to any food, and it was Friday afternoon," Mr Awasthi said.
Mr Awasthi was able to quickly coordinate with Bendigo Foodshare to provide the 13 families with emergency food and support.
He soon realised many more Muslim and Indonesian families were struggling with income and access to food.
Supporting Muslim community
Many were on short-term temporary work, student, and partner visas, meaning they were in insecure work and ineligible for JobSeeker and JobKeeper.
Mr Awasthi said some were unaware or fearful of approaching mainstream services for help.
"One of the main factors was around a fear of judgement and rejection. These people had never accessed support in their lives," Mr Awasthi said.
Mr Awasthi secured Victorian Government funding and reached out to the Bendigo Australian Indonesia Klub and Bendigo Islamic Association to help them set up their own culturally sensitive food-relief program, in collaboration with Bendigo Foodshare.
The program is continuing to provide culturally appropriate food to almost 900 central Victorians every week.
Mr Awasthi said having the community organisations at the centre of the program was a game changer.
"These organisations are now a part of emergency food relief so if anything happens they can access culturally safe, not only food, but other services also," Mr Awasthi said.
Volunteers' 13-hour days
Eaglehawk Community Centre coordinator Tracey Clarke said when the lockdown first hit it was devastating for her community.
"That was a really heartbreaking thing for us because we just had such a wonderful, colourful, and vibrant environment of people," Ms Clarke said.
"I told my volunteer staff we could shut down and go home if that's where you feel safer, or we can just continue to do what we have always been doing and that's cooking, and helping, and supporting our community."
The volunteers opted to try to help others, and shortly after the community centre began receiving hundreds of kilos of food from local cafes forced to shut down.
"We were actually here working 13-hour days to try to be respectful to that food and to try and honour the sacrifices that these businesses were making," Ms Clarke said.
With additional support from Foodbank and other community organisations, the centre has been cooking more than 400 meals a week and doing regular welfare checks on elderly and vulnerable members of the community.
Over the course of the pandemic, the organisation has made and delivered almost 11,000 meals with volunteers putting in about 20,000 hours in total.
"We wanted to minimise the amount of times that people had to leave their home, especially our more senior people and those people in the high-risk category — the people that were more vulnerable," Ms Clarke said.
Help is here to stay
Vanessa Wiltshire, who coordinated the City of Greater Bendigo's Help Your Neighbour program during the pandemic, said she was inspired by the stories of human kindness she came across this year.
"There are people who dedicate their lives to the community and to helping and supporting others, and in some instances doing the work that they love and investing some of their own personal finances into it," Ms Wiltshire said.
"These things that we've learnt about the human need and the enjoyment that we get out of connecting with others, I think we need to hold on to and take that into a COVID-normal world, whatever it may look like."
Mr Awasthi said the multicultural food relief program would have a lasting positive impact on the community.
"I know now that it doesn't matter what comes in the future, whether that's fires or floods or anything, I know that these community members will be out there and standing to help and support the community," Mr Awasthi said.
The Eaglehawk Community Centre is still delivering some meals, and last week it held an in-person community lunch for the first time since the pandemic began.
Ms Clarke said she was now focused on reducing the isolation many felt during lockdown.
"The aim is to help minimise that isolation and the loneliness that people do feel out there, and that they may feel at home," Ms Clarke said.
