Community Casseroles have been cooking as a community for the community since 2015. We run weekly community cook-ups with rescued food, saving tonnes of food from landfill, and support our community with free home-cooked, home-delivered meals for anyone who needs them. Weekly we are delivering around 700 meals to our local community through our team of volunteer drivers.

At some point everyone finds themselves needing a community around them and for many, when crisis hits, they have few supports and community connections to hold them. This isolation can make hard times so much harder. So many people struggle alone and it can be very hard to reach out and make those community connections when you're already experiencing overwhelm and stress.

Community Casseroles home delivers meals to those in our community having a hard time. There is no qualification to access Community Casseroles, if you need a meal we will be there, with a week's worth of dinners and a shared understanding that everyone has hard times and we all deserve kindness and dignity.

Through our regular Community Cook Ups we offer another way for everyone, especially those isolated or lonely in our community, to find a support network and build friendships. Community Casseroles gives people a way to contribute meaningfully to their community even when living busy lives. Community meals means no one has to struggle alone and strong communities can grow.

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Our Community Casseroles - Mums’ Connection Space is a space for mums to come together: to find connection, to build community, and to share some of the daily load while being part of something bigger than each of us alone. 

We meet fortnightly on Fridays during the school term at Upwey Baptist Church, 9:30am to 1:30pm to cook together. There is no cost to attend and kids are welcome to our interactive children's program.

We cook together, share morning tea, drink amazing coffee and sit down to lunch together. This is a space of support and connection where mums can build a community together while making meals to support the broader local community as well as taking home some dinners for the family (or the neighbours, spreading around the mum-love). 

This is a space that makes room for mums who might otherwise be isolated. If you are a mum who has been limited in building your social network, maybe due to experiencing chronic illness, being a carer, experiencing family or domestic violence etc- we want to be a safe landing space for you. We know it can be especially difficult building those mum connections if you're already juggling other challenges. 

All mums welcome, you may have little ones or your kids may be grown, but we all have something to share with each other on this mum-journey.

For further information email us at mumscooking@foothillscare.org.au 

Or request to join our facebook page 

The Ferntree Gully Community Safety Outreach Project is a ‘Knox Empowering Communities’ project, funded by the Victorian Government’s Empowering Communities Initiative as part of the Building Safer Communities Program.

This 16-month pilot project, which commenced in April 2023, is based around the Ferntree Gully village community and addresses issues of safety and social connection, especially for the most vulnerable within our community. The project centres around four key stakeholder groups, including local community groups, traders, law enforcement and vulnerable people in the area.

We have employed two outreach workers for this project especially to support locals in need of an extra hand-up. This happens through the building of relationships or respect and trust and where possible supporting them to address challenges they are facing.

This project builds on the work that Foothills has been doing, supporting locals around Ferntree Gully for over 20 years now. It will also work with our local community to co-design responses, activities, programs and events to build positive community outcomes for all.