DURING the long weekend volunteers from the community and churches spent time in their homes to cook about 300 kilos of food in support of Midland Meals (MM).

Feed it Forward volunteer Teena Spark said the cook for a cause program started last year to provide meals for the homeless.

Mrs Spark and her husband started dropping off leftover food to MM from the Feed it Forward pantry three years ago and they became acquainted with Pastor Loren Pratt who cooked at MM.

The program began after Mrs Spark asked Pastor Pratt if her church could cook meals for MM.

“Last year the church wanted to do more and organised volunteers to cook meals,” Mrs Spark said.

“MM provided the food and the church the volunteers.”

She said some volunteers went all out and cooked more than 10 dishes with the ingredients they collected.

“The volunteers took the ingredients home and returned the next day to deliver the cooked dish.

“We ended up with 150 trays, and around 300 kilos worth of cooked food.”

Mrs Spark said this was almost double last year’s outcome when 85 trays and about 185 kilos of food was cooked.

She said this year’s program was different because members of the community were invited to participate.

“Half our volunteers this year were from the community, and they were just awesome.”

Volunteer Terangi Berryman said her and her daughters were very excited to help with the cause.

"Cooking together in our home brought us all so much joy and happiness," she said,

"We enjoyed chatting and laughing as we worked together, this brought a great bond and love amongst us."

Despite the limited advertisement about the event, Mrs Spark said she wasn’t surprised by the big turnout of volunteers.

“The community really feels for those doing it tough,” she said.

“With these horrendous rents and the mortgages and the cost of living just going up and up.”

Mrs Spark said more action needed to be taken to address the cost of living crisis.

“I feel the government are not putting the needs of its people first, leaving charitable organisations to pick up the pieces, stepping in where government has failed.”

She said the crisis was intergenerational, with old and young people affected.

“I’ve had one pensioner come through and cry because they got pumpkin.

“They got a slice of pumpkin, and they said, ‘oh my gosh, you don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had pumpkin’.”

After the program, Mrs Spark said volunteers approached her and said they enjoyed the work and wanted to continue helping.

“We are now in the beginning stages of forming volunteer groups to operate from the MM kitchen.

“I’ve got about 18 people on the list from the community and two people that are willing to be team leaders to organise it.

“These lovely volunteers will go down, they’ll get food from the storeroom, get meats, go home, cook it, and then bring it back and it’ll go straight into the freezers of the MM.”

Mrs Spark said a name for the group was yet to be decided but she was welcome to suggestions.