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Every Saturday, our volunteers load freshly cooked meals into whatever vehicles they can borrow. Personal cars. Family vans. Whatever is available. The food is hot and nutritious when it leaves the kitchen — but between St Albans and the front door, there is a problem we can no longer ignore: there is no temperature control.

On Melbourne’s increasingly hot summer days, this is not just an operational inconvenience. It is a genuine food safety risk. And it is holding back everything we want to do for our community.

That is why acquiring a dedicated refrigerated delivery van is Om Bhandara’s single most important priority for 2026–27.

Our Current Situation

Right now, Om Bhandara delivers freshly cooked vegetarian meals to approximately 100 families across Melbourne’s western suburbs — once a week. Our volunteers are committed, our kitchen at 8 Charles Street, St Albans is fully equipped and registered, and our community partnerships with local food banks, grocery stores, and farmers keep ingredient costs low.

But we have around 20 families on a waiting list we cannot serve. And we are delivering on only one day per week, not because the need is limited to one day, but because our transport situation limits us.

Borrowed private vehicles mean:

• No cold chain — meals must be transported at ambient temperature with no temperature control from kitchen to doorstep
• No capacity for frozen meals or frozen staples — a significant limitation on the range and shelf-life of what we can provide
• Delivery cancellations or restrictions on hot days, when food safety risk in a non-refrigerated car is too high to accept
• A hard cap of approximately one delivery day per week, because we are limited to what volunteer vehicles can carry on a single run
• No ability to expand our geographic reach into Maribyrnong, Melton, Wyndham, and outer Melbourne LGAs where demand exists

What a Refrigerated Van Would Change

The vehicle we have in mind is a new Toyota HiAce with a purpose-built Thermaxx refrigerated fit-out, capable of cooling to –20°C. This is not an aspirational upgrade — it is the minimum infrastructure needed to deliver safely, legally, and at scale.

With the van, we would be able to:

• Maintain a proper cold chain from our commercial kitchen to every household we serve — meeting food safety requirements and Victorian healthy food relief guidelines
• Expand from one delivery day per week to three days per week, immediately clearing our waiting list and opening capacity for more families
• Introduce frozen meals and frozen staple packages for the first time, giving families food that lasts beyond a single meal
• Operate safely through summer — the period when hot-weather delivery restrictions currently force us to scale back
• Extend our reach across Brimbank, Maribyrnong, Melbourne, Melton, and Wyndham LGAs
• Reduce our per-meal delivery cost compared with the ad hoc vehicle arrangements we currently rely on

The Numbers

The total cost of the vehicle and refrigerated fit-out is $94,000, covering the HiAce base vehicle and Thermaxx refrigerated build ($89,000), stamp duty and on-road acquisition costs ($3,000), and professional Om Bhandara signage and vinyl wrap ($2,000).

We are seeking grant funding for this one-off capital purchase. All ongoing costs — registration, insurance, fuel, and servicing — will be met by Om Bhandara Ltd from our operating funds and ongoing donations.

To put this in perspective: hiring a refrigerated van at commercial rates would cost approximately $700 per week, or over $109,000 across three years. Buying our own vehicle breaks even at around 2.6 years and leaves us with an asset we own outright — with a five-year warranty on both the vehicle and the refrigerated fit-out.

The Timeline

We have already selected a supplier and obtained a quote. The build lead time on the refrigerated fit-out is six weeks. If funding is confirmed in September 2026, we expect to collect the completed vehicle in late October 2026 — ahead of the summer delivery period, when temperature-controlled transport is most critical.

Our first refrigerated delivery runs would commence in November 2026, with expanded three-day-per-week delivery through November and December 2026. Waitlisted families would be onboarded during this ramp-up period.

What This Means for Families

The families on our waiting list have been waiting. Some of them are migrants recently arrived in Australia with no income and no support network. Some are seniors who cannot easily leave home to access food assistance. Some are students whose part-time work has dried up and who have nowhere else to turn.

A refrigerated van will not solve every problem in the food relief system. But for these 20 families — and the many more we hope to reach across western Melbourne — it will mean the difference between receiving regular, safe, nutritious food relief and going without.

That is what this is about.

How You Can Support This

Om Bhandara Ltd is an ACNC-registered charity with Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status. All donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible.

If you would like to support the refrigerated van acquisition — or our broader food relief operations — you can donate directly to:

Account name: OM Bhandara Ltd  |  BSB: 083-237  |  Account: 234-109-228

Email remittances to info@ombhandara.com to receive your tax-deductible receipt.

You can also share this post, tell a friend, or reach out to us if you work with a business or grant-making organisation that might be able to help.

Together, we can make sure the cold chain holds — from our kitchen to every family’s table.

— The Om Bhandara Ltd Team

When people talk about food relief, they often imagine a standard food parcel: tinned goods, bread, perhaps some pasta. Practical. Filling. Sufficient. But for many of the families we serve at Om Bhandara, food is far more than fuel — it is culture, comfort, identity, and belonging. And for a migrant family far from home, receiving a meal that tastes familiar can mean the difference between feeling supported and feeling invisible.

This is why culturally appropriate food relief sits at the very centre of everything we do

The Communities We Serve

Melbourne’s western suburbs are home to one of Australia’s most culturally diverse populations. In the Brimbank region and surrounding areas, large communities of Indian, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, Fiji Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi families have built their lives — and many of them face unique vulnerabilities that standard food assistance programs are not designed to address.

International students on temporary visas, for example, are often excluded from the welfare safety net. When their income dries up — through a lost job, a health crisis, or a cancelled semester — there is very little to catch them. Many are vegetarian for religious or cultural reasons, and standard food bank provisions may include items they cannot or will not eat.

The cost-of-living crisis has made this worse. Rising rents, skyrocketing grocery prices, and stagnant wages have pushed more families into food insecurity — including people who would never have expected to need assistance.

What ‘Culturally Appropriate’ Actually Means

At Om Bhandara, culturally appropriate food relief means:

• Freshly cooked vegetarian meals, prepared in our commercial kitchen at 8 Charles Street, St Albans, by volunteers who understand South Asian cooking and dietary needs
• Ingredients sourced from local Indian grocery stores and farmers familiar with the produce our communities use every day
• Long-life food hampers that include culturally familiar staples — lentils, rice, spices, and other pantry essentials — not just generic tinned goods
• Delivery direct to the household, preserving the dignity of families who may feel uncomfortable visiting a public food bank
• Communication in the languages and through the networks our community trusts

These are not extras. They are the baseline of dignified food relief.

Our Track Record

Since 2020, Om Bhandara volunteers have delivered over 25,000 free meals across Melbourne’s western suburbs. We have done this through the Victorian Priority Response for Multicultural Communities program, through donations of produce from generous local suppliers, and through the tireless commitment of our volunteer team.

The feedback we receive is consistent: families tell us that receiving a hot, home-style meal — one that reflects their own food culture — makes them feel seen, supported, and less alone. That matters.

The Bigger Picture

Food insecurity among culturally diverse communities is underreported and underserved. People do not always know what assistance is available to them, or how to access it. Language barriers, unfamiliarity with Australian systems, and the stigma of asking for help all contribute to people going without.

Om Bhandara works to bridge those gaps. We operate through the networks and trusted relationships already present in our communities, which means families hear about us from a friend, a neighbour, or a community organisation they already trust.

We are an ACNC-registered charity with DGR status. Every dollar donated to Om Bhandara is directed toward feeding people who need it — and every donation of $2 or more is tax-deductible.

Join Us

If you share our belief that every person — regardless of visa status, background, or income — deserves access to food that nourishes both body and spirit, we would love your support. Donate, volunteer, or simply share our story. It all makes a difference.

Visit ombhandara.com or email us at info@ombhandara.com to find out more.

Every week, in a commercial kitchen on Charles Street in St Albans, a team of volunteers comes together before sunrise. They chop, cook, pack, and carry — hundreds of portions of fresh, hot, culturally appropriate food destined for families who would otherwise go without. It is a quiet act of community, repeated week after week. This is Om Bhandara.

Where It Began

Om Bhandara started in 2020, during the height of Melbourne’s Covid-19 lockdowns. At a time when supermarket shelves were stripped bare and community support structures were overwhelmed, a group of volunteers from Melbourne’s western suburbs stepped up to fill the gap. The need was acute: migrants, international students, and seniors on temporary visas — people with no access to JobKeeper or welfare payments — were going without food.

What began as an emergency response quickly revealed something deeper: the hunger did not stop when the lockdowns ended. The cost-of-living crisis continued to bite. And the communities most affected — South Asian households, newly arrived families, people navigating Australian systems for the first time — needed more than a one-off pantry drop. They needed regular, dignified, culturally familiar food relief.

So the volunteers kept coming back.

The Scale of What We Have Achieved Together

Between 2021 and 2024, Om Bhandara volunteers prepared and delivered over 25,000 free meals across Melbourne’s western suburbs, with a particular focus on the Brimbank region. We have served Indian, Nepalese, Sri Lankan, Fiji Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi communities — people who deserve food that reflects their culture, their dietary needs, and their dignity.

We have done this through our participation in the Victorian Priority Response for Multicultural Communities program, through partnerships with local food banks, Indian grocery stores, and generous farmers who donate or discount fresh produce — and through the relentless commitment of our volunteer team.

Today, Om Bhandara Ltd is a formally registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) and holds Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status. Donations of $2 or more are fully tax-deductible.

Who We Serve

Our community is broad, but the thread that connects the people we serve is vulnerability. We reach:

• Migrants and refugees navigating the Australian system without a safety net
• International students on temporary visas, often excluded from government support
• Seniors living alone on fixed incomes, impacted by rising food costs
• Families experiencing sudden financial hardship due to job loss or illness
• Newly arrived households unfamiliar with local food assistance services

All of our meals are freshly cooked, vegetarian, and prepared in our registered commercial kitchen at 8 Charles Street, St Albans — a fully equipped space with a cool room, commercial cooking equipment, and the capacity to serve our community at scale.

Looking Ahead

Om Bhandara is not slowing down. Right now, we deliver to approximately 100 families every week — and we have around 20 more families on a waiting list we cannot yet reach. We are actively working to expand our capacity so that no family in Melbourne’s west has to wait for food relief.

In the coming months, you will be hearing more from us about our plans to grow. We believe every person in our community deserves access to a nutritious meal — not once, but regularly, reliably, and with dignity.

How You Can Help

If you would like to support our work, there are several ways to get involved:

• Donate — all donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible. Bank transfers can be made to OM Bhandara Ltd, BSB 083-237, Account 234-109-228. Please email info@ombhandara.com for your receipt.
• Volunteer — join our team in the kitchen or on delivery runs.
• Donate produce — we welcome fresh or surplus food from local growers and retailers.
• Spread the word — share our story with people who may need our support, or who may want to help.

Thank you for being part of Om Bhandara’s story. Every meal we deliver is a community effort — and it matters more than words can say.