Our little charity is currently in the running for funding from the Victorian government to launch Victoria’s very first Pet Food Bank, but we need our supporter’s help to make it happen.
You might be wondering, what’s a Pet Food Bank? And why would we need one?
Well, the best way to answer that is to take a step back to the beginning. As those who have been following us for a while may already know, the idea behind Pets Of The Homeless (POTH) first started when our founder Yvonne noticed there was a gap in the homelessness sector that simply wasn’t being addressed.
For many people facing homelessness, Yvonne knew that their pets were often their only companion, and in some cases, perhaps their one remaining connection to the rest of the world. Their pets were important to them, and they deserved the support to give their beloved animals proper care, and a proper meal.
Yvonne began using her own money to buy pet food and took to the streets to distribute it amongst those in need of support.
POTH began in Yvonne’s own home, but once people began to find out about what she was doing the charity grew and grew.
Soon, generous supporters began to donate pet food, and for the first 12-18 months the operation continued out of Yvonne’s kitchen and garage. Before long, the charity had outgrown the space, and POTH secured a storage unit to house the food ahead of distribution.
Not long after, POTH partnered with a number of organisations such as drop in centres, soup kitchens and food pantries that we like to call our Community Partners.
We began to host packing days every 3 months at a community hall where volunteers could come in and repack the food into travel size bags that our Community Partners could then hand out to those in need.
It might sound like we had it all figured out… but logistically, it was a nightmare!
The day before every event, over a tonne of dry food had to be transported to the hall to get it ready for the volunteers to come pack the food. Because we didn’t have access to a van, we need to do this over multiple trips which usually took hours and hours.
On packing days, upwards of 20 volunteers would generously donate about 3-4 hours of their time to pack over 1500 packs of food for distribution to our Community Partners. However, that’s just the kibble!
We also had to distribute the tinned food and sachets so there is a lot of double handling which means we are unable to support more than a few organisations at a time.
Sadly in July this year, we had lost our storage facility as we were told to vacate because perishables are not allowed to be stored on site.
With no other viable options at our disposal, the decision was made to put the pet food program on hold until we could move into our own warehouse.
However, not all hope was lost, and we still had big plans of how we as a unified force could help the people and pets experiencing homelessness in our community, which brings us to Pick My Project!
Pick My Project is a Victorian-first community grants initiative, which sees over $30 million being spent on projects to improve the local communities, with at least $1 million in funding available in each metro and regional area.
We knew that this would be the perfect opportunity for us to expand our reach as a charity and help more and more people, so we quickly set about creating a proposal to make sure that POTH had a fighting chance of being awarded a grant!
Within our proposal, we asked for $200,000 to go towards the cost of renting and setting up a warehouse and purchasing a van so that we could establish the first-ever Pet Food Bank within Victoria.
Once established, the pet food bank would allow us to expand our services into other areas and help more people than we could have ever hoped.
Having a central place to work out of will increase the efficiency and productivity, and could ultimately open up so many more opportunities such as a monthly vet clinic and a grooming service… the possibilities are endless!
However, we’re up against some pretty stiff competition, and to make this dream of ours a reality, we need VOTES and lots of them!! Thankfully, it’s super simple stuff, and will only take you a few minutes to complete.
To vote, here’s what you need to do:
- Head to Pick My Project and register for an account.
- Select “Carrum VIC 3197” as your local community.
- Add our project “Pet Food Bank” to the shortlist, along with two other projects.
- Hit that SUBMIT button!
And you are done!
At POTH, we are all so very excited about what the future might hold if we’re successful in receiving this grant. It really will enable us to change the lives of so many, and offer some much needed support for people and pets in need.
So, we hope you’ll spare us a few minutes of your time to cast your vote for the POTH pet food bank, and as always, we thank you for your support.
Written by Kellie George
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