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The Fruit Box Group to deliver fresh food to disadvantaged

Melbourne-based fruit and milk delivery company, The Fruit Box has unveiled a plan to deliver weekly boxes of fresh food basics to a thousand disadvantaged Australian families.

Called ‘The One Box’, this program will launch this month. According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, around five per cent% of Australians experience food insecurity and healthy food habits are especially financially challenging for low income families who need to spend a third of their income to eat well.

Under the initiative, The Fruit Box Group will donate 25,000 boxes of fresh fruit, vegetables, milk and bread over the course of 2017. The group is investing up to $400,000 in the pilot program in Melbourne and will assess its impact as it is rolled out, with a view to a national program and a public charity in the future.

“As our business grows, so does our corporate social responsibility,” said The Fruit Box CEO and founder, Martin Halphen (pictured). “In a plentiful country like Australia, it’s shocking that so many families are going without. We believe that one box of fresh produce each week can make a real difference to families in need, hopefully creating a healthy foundation for children now and having a lifetime influence on health.”

The Fruit Box Group has worked closely with local community agencies to identify the initial 1,000 families. Key collaborations with Fareshare for distribution of the boxes and La Trobe Business School – which will collect and analyse impact data over the program’s first 25 weeks – strengthen this innovative CSR program.

“This kind of valuable support from businesses to services like ours gives us greater capacity to offer tangible support to more families,” said Sharee Grinter of West Footscray Neighbourhood House, one of the partner agencies involved.

“With fresh food so expensive it’s often the first to fall off the list when resources are stretched, so a weekly box of good quality nutritious food will have a huge impact on the health and wellbeing of families in need.”

 

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