Byline: Lisa Cugnetto

Free to Feed is a wonderful Melbourne-based social enterprise with food, community, and connection at its heart. The registered charity creates empowering employment opportunities for refugees and people seeking asylum through the creation of shared food experiences. These include community cooking classes, food events, and catering that celebrate and showcase the diverse cuisines and stories of the people they support.

Free to Feed founder and CEO Loretta Bolotin established the social enterprise in 2015. Prior to this, she spent a decade working, studying, and volunteering in refugee services and the humanitarian/NGO sector, where she saw firsthand “the heartbreaking effects that social isolation and employment barriers kept having on clients’ resettlement experiences in Australia”.

After years spent working overseas for large organisations, Bolotin returned to Australia and began volunteering in detention centres. “I caught up with some friends following their release into the community and I asked them, how should we celebrate your freedom?” says Bolotin of the moment that led her to establish Free to Feed.

They took her to an Afghan market, shopped for specialty ingredients, and asked her to gather a group of her friends together for a special feast. “I witnessed their eyes light up and their talents shine when cooking and sharing their traditional food in their new home. My life was forever changed.

“The idea for Free to Feed was born out of a need to connect the community with the abundance and beauty of what people had brought with them on their journeys. To celebrate that and allow newly arrived people to hold on to those talents as they settle into their new home.”

Free to Feed started slowly and organically in 2015. Through small, intimate dinners and cooking classes held in borrowed spaces around Melbourne’s inner north. Family and friends made up many of the first guests.

By 2016, as the concept gained momentum and interest, Free to Feed held their first-ever official cooking class one evening at a borrowed cafe in Northcote.

“That night, our instructor, Niro, shared stories of incredible resilience, bravery, and loss. We cooked and ate delicious curries and samosas together. We all left feeling warm and elated. What's more, we had delivered our first ever paid shift of work!”

Free to Feed has grown and evolved dramatically over the years. Making the leap from their early days informal cooking classes to now offering professional food production, catering, experiences, and events.

In addition to their Northcote space where they offer cooking experiences, Free to Feed also renovated and launched (during lockdown, no less) an art deco events space in North Fitzroy, where they host workshops, corporate functions, community and private events, weddings, and their own feasts and gatherings.

“Our feasts – whether part of our experiences or through our catering – are more than just food though, they’re stories, gently rolled, stirred, and folded by the people we are honoured to work with,” says Bolotin of the food made and shared by Free to Feed participants.

Cuisine that hails from all corners of the world – Colombia, Vietnam, Iran, Somalia, Burma, Ethiopia, and Egypt, among them. Made with special, personal recipes that, Bolotin notes, are layered with the memories, experiences, and emotions of home countries, loved ones, and journeys made by those cooking them.

“Our advocacy comes to life through these stories, these meals, and these moments of deeply intimate connection shared between strangers.”

Central to Free to Feed’s work are the three trauma-informed programs they deliver to people from asylum-seeking and refugee backgrounds to help overcome their personal barriers to employment through food.

One is a 12-month commercial cooking, training, and employment program for those who hope to work in the food and hospitality industries, which includes accredited training (a Certificate III in Commercial Cookery) and paid work in Free to Feed’s commercial kitchen.

Another is a more open-ended, nine-month empowerment, communication, and leadership program, which includes paid opportunities for participants to share stories of food and culture through Free to Feed events and communications.

And their recently launched community adult education (CAE) pre-employment program, a pre-accredited 10-week training course for those looking to build their skills and confidence in the hospitality sector.

The new course, which will engage over 100 participants every year, will help Free to Feed significantly increase the number of people they currently support. Bolotin says, “Our sights are firmly set on increasing the flow of wages straight to empowering people seeking asylum.”

Each program has a keen focus on not only providing education and employment opportunities but supporting each participant’s long-term wellbeing and connection to the community.

“Our program draws from best practice, research, and our own experience working with people from asylum-seeking and refugee backgrounds who have passion and skills in food. In its design, we have been guided by trauma-informed practice, and theories of acculturation, psychosocial rehabilitation, and empowerment in the context of the resettlement experience.”

Bolotin says that the programs have a profound impact not only on the people they employ but their families and communities equally.

“Our participants enjoy soaring confidence, feelings of welcome and acceptance, and the pride to share their cultures, stories, and homes with the Australian community. Free to Feed empowers people seeking asylum and refugees to live meaningful, connected, and productive lives in Australia, using food as a universal language of connection.”

The strength of their work is reflected in their impact. Since 2015, Free to Feed have distributed over $1.4 million in employment wages and 60,000 hours of paid training to people seeking asylum and refugees in the Melbourne community.

“The village we’re trying to create does not stop at our doors,” explains Bolotin.

She shares the story of a Free to Feed participant, Laila, who got lost at a busy train station on the way to work, as an example.

“At that moment, an old sense of isolation and fear arises for Laila, momentarily. A complete stranger walks up to her. ‘Laila? I recognise you from your Free to Feed class! Can I help you?”. The stranger points Laila to the right platform.”

“For Laila, this is a profound moment. She feels safe and affirmed, saying 'They are a nice person' instead of 'They are from Australia and were nice to me’.

“This simple shift in language powerfully demonstrates a decrease in the perceived barriers felt by Laila, a milestone that supports the core of what our programs are all about.”

Free to Feed’s cooking experiences are offered at 539 High Street, Northcote, while their events space is located at 205-211 Queens Parade, Fitzroy North.

www.freetofeed.org.au