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I don’t know about you but I regularly drop $12 on a sandwich at lunch. While wishing I was one of those super-organised people who brings an avocado from home and has a cracker stash in her desk. Those people have probably bought a holiday house by now with all their savings. I will never be those people.
But on Tuesday I will be putting my habit on temporary hold in order to donate my lunch money to Give A Fork This Christmas. Big wow, right? It’s just one day. It’s hardly going to change the world …
“Actually it is,” says campaign founder Jamie Green, “it’s going to change someone’s world on December 25th.”
Green is the social entrepreneur behind the One Night Stand sleepwear brand, which, with every sale, buys a meal for someone sleeping rough.
The lunch money idea struck him a few months ago.
“I read this statistic: that in Australia nearly 650,000 people receive food relief each month, and a third of them are children. Charities can’t cope with the numbers,” he says. “It’s coming up to Christmas, which is such a day for waste. I will eat too many prawns, but there will be people who don’t have that problem. What if we could solve that just for one day?”
Green was already working with General Pants and OzHarvest on One Night Stand, so partnering with them was a no-brainer. OzHarvest will provide two meals to someone in need for every $1 donated through Give A Fork . TWO MEALS FOR A BUCK?
“It’s true,” says Green. “Because they rescue food that would otherwise have been thrown away, they can provide fantastic healthy food for very little.”
I have a lot. I have too much. Others, of course, have just the clothes on their backs, they have no home, no security, and no lunch. It doesn’t bear thinking about, does it? Which is why most of us don’t think about it most of the time, and I include myself in that statement.
“People get overwhelmed,” says Green, “which is totally understandable. But this is an easy thing you can do.”
If you happen to be in Sydney’s Bondi tomorrow, you can visit the Give A Fork Food Truck, which won’t sell you a sandwich, but will take your lunch money off your hands. Otherwise you can donate any time online in the run-up to Christmas. 100% of donations go to OzHarvest.
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