The Cannington Seventh day adventist church has increased its fortnightly Friday dinners for the less fortunate to weekly following a surge in people seeking help.
The church’s kitchen van has run its fortnightly dinners for the past year using food donations and produce from the recently opened community garden.
Coordinator Heather Stewart-Johnson said more and more people had been seeking help so they needed to change it to a weekly event.
“A year ago we were getting somewhere between five and 10 people a night,” she said.
“Now we’re getting between 40 and 65 a night, the need is there obviously.
“It’s directly reflecting what’s happening in the economy, there’s a lot of professional people coming in with three degrees behind them doing different things because they can’t get work.”
Ms Stewart-Johnson said the food van played an important role for people in a rough patch in the Canning area.
“The only area they could get that kind of help is to go into town,” she said.
“That’s not possible for some of them, we just feel that it’s really important to keep people content in their own area.”
Ms Stewart-Johnson said the church was looking for more volunteers to run the van on the extra night.
“Ideally we’d like to get four separate teams so it’s not the same people,” she said.
“At the moment we’ve got two teams and they do food preparation, serving the food and getting out there and mingling with the folk and giving them a feeling of comfort.”
Volunteer Chris Gwilym started six months ago and said it was a good feeling being able to give back to the community.
“There are a lot of people struggling, it’s only a small thing we do but at least we can help some people,” he said.
Anyone who would like to donate food or volunteer can call Ms Stewart-Johnson on 0450 636 413 or via email on heatmarg@yahoo.com.
