Feed The Little Children

Manja Ngangka Jalbi

Manja Ngangka Jalbi

Manja Ngangka Jalbi is a new program which Feed the Little Children Inc intend to commence in July 2024. Meaning “Great Grandmothers who hold many Dreamtime Stories”, our program is designed to support the Grandmothers who are the primary carer’s of children we deliver meals to on the weekends and to empower them with information ...

GOAL

$15,800

Australia > ACT > Regional
07/01/2024 > 22/01/2025

Field of Interest

  • Education/training and employment
  • Individual/family services and support
  • Women and Girls

Target Population

  • People experiencing socio-economic disadvantage or vulnerability
  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
Feed The Little Children Feed The Little Children

Feed The Little Children Inc is a small grassroots charity based in Broome, Western Australia, delivering up to 350 hot nutritious meals, bread and pantry staples to children experiencing food insecurity every Friday and Saturday nights. In 2007 the founder of the charity was employed in Broome as a WA Police intelligence analyst and identified a direct correlation between food insecurity and juvenile crime in the town on weekends. After four years of comprehensive consultation with Aboriginal community members, deliveries of nutritious meals to the children commenced in 2012.

Since this time our operations have expanded and grown to include a cooking program for the children we provide meals to and we are currently in consultation with elders to commence a program to support the Grandmothers who are caring for their Grandchildren, to support and empower them through a cooking program, financial counselling and child health education. The charity has one paid position for our Co-ordinator and receives no Government funding.

Feed the Little Children Inc share a vision to break the cycle of hunger and promote healthy eating habits for children in Broome and beyond. Our purpose is to work with our community to provide nutritious meals for hungry children and build relationships with families which empower them to improve their circumstances so that their children thrive and reach their full potential. We strive to improve health outcomes for the children we serve and educational outcomes by helping to send children to school with food in their bellies, as well as reducing juvenile crime on the nights we deliver.

Project Summary

Manja Ngangka Jalbi is a new program which Feed the Little Children Inc intend to commence in July 2024. Meaning “Great Grandmothers who hold many Dreamtime Stories”, our program is designed to support the Grandmothers who are the primary carer’s of children we deliver meals to on the weekends and to empower them with information and skills to assist them to move away from needing the assistance from our charity in the future.

The program will run each school term and provide transport to up to 8 Grandmothers who are primary carers to children in food insecure households. Each week, guest speakers will be arranged to meet and yarn with the Grandmothers to develop their understanding of nutrition, child health, budgeting and services available to them. The Grandmothers will also prepare and take home a nutritious meal to feed to the family that night.

Feed the Little Children Inc intend for this program to form an advisory network of Broome Elders to assist the charity in providing culturally secure food provisions. In partnership with like minded organisations and services, this will allow co-ordinated service access and activities such as cooking, discussions about budgets and healthier food, as well as cultural activities such as bush food trips and sharing of knowledge with the Elders. Facilitating yarning circles each week for the Elders with a variety of professions such as child health specialists, financial counsellors, and social workers, we intend help the Grandmother’s develop lifelong skills to pass on to the Grandchildren.

Project Outcomes

The potential to create social change through Feed the Little Children Inc is considerable and this program is a major part of our plan to harness this potential and create real change in the lives of Broome children experiencing food insecurity.
Grandmothers will be asked to provide feedback throughout the program about how the program is benefitting them and ways they believe we can tailor the program to best help them become independent from service reliance.
Our success in achieving this will be measured at review in July 2025 through statistics kept on the number of meals provided to households each weekend. The families which Feed the Little Children Inc support are always upfront if they do not need assistance with feeding the children when we deliver to their houses on the weekends, as they know another family may be in higher need of assistance that day. When this occurs, we record this information their household records as "service not required".

We hope that over the next twelve months we will see a reduction in assistance required from the Grandmothers, and will be able to track the success of the program through this data as there are no other Food Relief options available to support people in Broome outside of our charity.
"You always make them kids smile when you come and sometimes I don't have any food at home and it's hard to feed them all." - Margrette - Grandmother of 4 children.

Budget Breakdown

TOTAL BUDGET: $15,800
FUNDING
Funding source Amount
Funding Gap (unconfirmed) $15,800
EXPENSES
Expense item Amount
Co-ordinator's wages $12,000
Consumables for program sessions $2,600
Fuel $1,200

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Contact Us
Level 6, 126 Wellington Parade, East Melbourne VIC 3002

We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first inhabitants and Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, learn and work. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

Australian Communities Foundation is a proudly inclusive organisation and an ally of LGBTQIA+ communities and the movement toward equality.