The Warrawong Residents Forum, which runs the program since 2003, provides three meals for vulnerable people every week from donated food from organisations like OzHarvest.

Volunteers help run the community lunch program and its estimated 1000 kilograms of otherwise wasted food is provided to struggling families and vulnerable people.

Member for Wollongong, Paul Scully has been a champion of the free community lunch program and has fought to keep funding for it flowing from the NSW Government.

“The Warrawong Community Centre does great work through this free community lunch program.

“Warrawong is one of the most vulnerable communities in New South Wales.

“Cost of living pressures and rising rents have put real pressure on the family budget.

“Low-income people, many with children, make the difficult choice every day on what bills they can afford to pay and what meals to skip to make ends meet.

“This $70,000 funding commitment will, if NSW Labor is elected, give this great free community lunch program a much-needed boost to keep delivering good, healthy meals to pensioners, children, and other people doing it tough in the Warrawong community”, he said.

Mr Scully also announced the Berkeley Neighbourhood Centre would receive a $30,000 funding grant to upgrade its kitchen.

“The Berkeley Neighbourhood Centre kitchen is in need of an upgrade to continue to provide the healthy eating programs the Centre delivers”, he said.

The announcements come following NSW Labor’s commitment of $8 million to Foodbank NSW/ACT to help continue the School Breakfast 4 Health program, which currently delivers millions of nutritious breakfasts to children across more than 500 schools.

The funding will help keep the program running over the next four years and increase support to 1000 schools in total.

NSW Labor has announced measures to help ease the cost of living in a range of areas, including through its $485 million Energy Relief Fund for small businesses and 1.6 million eligible NSW families and households.

Around 320,000 eligible NSW small businesses will see $630 directly debited off their electricity bill and eligible NSW households, who are hit hardest by rising electricity prices, will receive $250 directly off their energy bill.

“NSW Labor understands that many families are doing it tough and struggling to make ends meet.

“Electing a Minns Labor Government on March 25 will help to ease some of those cost-of-living pressures and give our most vulnerable people in our local community an extra helping hand”, Mr Scully said.