Caroline Hammat
Community volunteers, and Unity Housing employees and tenants joined together for a special Neighbour Day event hosted at the Millicent High School last Wednesday.
Volunteers from Millicent Shares a Plate (MSAP), ac.care and Sukhchain ‘Sukhi’ Dhaliwal from New Heaven restaurant helped local residents to cook a low cost and nutritious meal in the schools well equipped Home Economics department.
Following the cooking and kitchen clean up, the vegetable curry was enjoyed by all with the remaining meals delivered to community drop off points for collection by those in need.
Peter Zeitz is the team leader with Unity Housing and said the day was about bringing community together.
“The idea of this Neighbour Day is to showcase local services that assist people that might be under some financial pressure,” he said.
“Millicent Shares a Plate is a volunteer group that prepares and disperses meals every Thursday and Sukhi, who is a chef from New Heaven restaurant and also the local IGA supermarket operator, has volunteered his time.
“Sukhi produces weekly meals and keeps them in his fridge at IGA for community members to take free of charge, which is awesome.
“We also decided to highlight the ac.care community centre which has a lot of food support and relief as well.”
Alicia Morphett-Edwards is a Unity Housing tenant who moved to Millicent six months ago to take on a carer’s role for her father.
“My dad got a message on his mobile phone about the Unity cooking class and because he can’t come along he suggested that I go,” she said.
“He thought I could pick up some new skills and cook something new.
“I’ve loved the afternoon.
“I’ve met some new people and talked about doing some interesting things, there is other volunteer work that I might be able to get into or craft classes.”
Mr Dhaliwal is well known in the community for his free meal initiative which he began three years ago and was the inspiration for MSAP.
“Today is a very good opportunity for all the people who came down today to look at how we can be cooking nutritious meals on a budget.
“We paid around $170 for all of today’s groceries and I’m guessing we will make about a 100 meals which comes out at $1.70 a meal, so it’s a pretty good value meal.
“We are very thankful for Unity Housing to arrange this event and give people the opportunity to come and learn.”
Millicent Shares a Plate volunteers were also grateful for the opportunity as their usual Thursday cooking venue at the RSL Hall was in use for ANZAC Day events.
The remaining meals were delivered to ac.care Community Centre and the IGA supermarket foyer fridge for collection by those in the community needing assistance.
