OzHarvest has opened a new weekly pop-up Hamper Hub in Granville to help address the drastic rise in demand for food relief in the area. After running successful hamper hubs in Redfern, Waterloo, Rhodes, Harbourside and Lakemba, this service will support local residents by providing them with hampers packed full of dry goods and fresh produce.

OzHarvest NSW State Manager, Richard Watson, explained that the Hamper Hub program is one of the emergency food relief services introduced since the impact of COVID-19 and comes at an important time for the community. “Granville has one of the highest Jobseeker recipient rates in the country. With JobKeeper coming to an end, and JobSeeker payments reduced in March, we identified this as an area of need as many people will be hit hard by the changes in benefits.

“When people know there is a regular supply of fresh, nourishing food – it’s one less thing for them to worry about. In the last year, OzHarvest has provided more than 25,000 hampers through pop-up Hamper Hubs and 140,000 hampers across all programs to communities heavily impacted by COVID-19.”

The Granville Hamper Hub is run by OzHarvest volunteers and is open every Thursday from 11am – 2pm to anyone in need of food relief. Each hamper is full of dry goods such as rice, oil, tinned goods and long-life milk and a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables.

The Bridge Street location was secured for OzHarvest by Member for Granville, Julia Finn, who also provided the team with a better understanding of the area and connected the team with several local community organisations. The new Hamper Hub is funded by the NSW Government to provide emergency food relief during the pandemic and will run until the end of June.

Granville Hamper Hub can be found at 3-5 Bridge St, Granville – opposite the train station.