CANBERRA’S Woman of the Year, Cindy Mitchell, has stepped away from her business (for now) and, in just under two weeks, has helped set up a food-relief network to help the vulnerable during the coronavirus pandemic. 

The Canberra Relief Network, led by Uniting Care Kippax, in partnership with the ACT government and other community partners, was launched as a response to COVID-19, and Cindy, with what she calls her “Canberra Woman of the Year cape”, took on the challenge to get it running.

“Basically, what the Canberra Relief Network is set up to do, is to support vulnerable Canberrans finding themselves in food distress as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Cindy, 43, of Nicholls.

When the social entrepreneur and founder of The Mill House Ventures, a social enterprise business development consultancy, was asked to lead the project, she got permission from The Mill House board to take off time for as long as she is needed at the network. 

And while Cindy misses working with her “tribe”, especially now that many of their businesses are struggling, she says the network will save lives in the community. 

“I just physically don’t have enough hours in the day to serve in all the ways I’d like to while also being a halfway decent wife and mum,” she says. 

But, Cindy says the work she is doing at the Canberra Relief Network is important and is grateful she can use her business background to help. 

“[The network is] about relieving some of the immediate pressure,” she says. 

“It’s about people making the choice between purchasing food or medicine.

“We’re looking at the most vulnerable people. These people never had the option of stockpiling food in the first place.”

Cindy says the network is expecting to help people who are already connected with some of the partnering agencies but they anticipate there will be a range of new people who have lost jobs that will need their support, too.

But, because of the public health pandemic, and its focus to stop the spread of COVID-19, the network will not be asking for donations from the community.

“We have a food operation centre where we are taking deliveries of food from major food providers,” she says.

“We are having to purchase foods like any other supplier would and can’t accept community donations because of hygiene reasons.”

Over the next six months, the ACT government will provide $1.5 million to help these food relief organisations, who Cindy says were already struggling to meet the increasing demands. 

“Before this, food pantries and centres were already really low on their stocks,” she says.

“Donations had reduced, we just came off the back of the bushfire season, which left a lot of local pantries struggling, even before this all happened.”

And, because there’s been such a huge demand for food, Cindy says charities couldn’t buy food either. But by bringing these agencies together, she says they’ve been able to move higher into the queue to access pantry supplies than if each organisation was working alone.

“The idea is to initially have pantry essentials and as the public health crisis continues to emerge we might be able to stock fresh food and frozen meals,” she says. 

But at the moment, the pantry will only supply canned goods and pantry items such as pasta, and other basic household items such as toilet paper.

“It’s all about being ready to address the needs. This is about saving lives and reducing injury and trauma in the community,” Cindy says.

“One of the challenges of this period of time is we’ll see exacerbated comorbidities such as domestic violence, mental health issues, disabilities and homelessness.

“All these things we have as a problem already and they will just be exacerbated.

“Their vulnerability is exacerbated and this increased vulnerability can lead to premature deaths.

“If we can reduce the impact on that through this network then it’s worthwhile.”

But Cindy didn’t set up the network alone and says this is the ideal time to appreciate the community sector and the work it does.

“These people, they’re not getting paid a lot of money, yet they’re the people that are keeping our community going,” she says. 

For people who require food relief, Cindy says they can register online or over the phone and the network will organise to put a hamper together to suit the needs of each household, independently. 

The hampers will be delivered to one of the network’s community sector partners, who will contact the household and arrange for them to pick it up.

Donate money or register via canberrarelief.com.au