A personal journey through homelessness, food insecurity and community building
There is a particular understanding of hunger that comes from having to work out where your next meal is coming from.
It changes the way you look at food. It changes the way you look at people. And it changes the way you understand the places where people gather, eat and find some temporary relief from the circumstances of their lives.
My involvement in food insecurity didn’t begin with a charity, a community organisation or a decision to become a volunteer. It began much earlier, through my own experiences of homelessness and the everyday business of finding somewhere to eat.
Looking back, the journey from those experiences to coordinating Food Not Bombs Hobart has been a long one. It has involved kitchens, community centres, friendships, unexpected opportunities and a growing interest in what happens when people organise themselves to look after one another.
Finding somewhere to eat
I was homeless in Tasmania for a period between approximately 1997 and 2000.
I was young, finding my way through life and dealing with circumstances that made ordinary arrangements of housing and family difficult. Like many people experiencing homelessness, I had to become familiar with the places where basic needs could be met.
For approximately eighteen months, I visited Bethlehem House in Hobart every weekday for lunch.
Those visits became part of the structure of my life. Knowing where a meal was available mattered. It provided a degree of routine and a place to go during a period when many other things were uncertain.
There is something important about a meal that is available without having to negotiate your entire life story.
Food services are often discussed in terms of numbers: meals provided, people assisted, kilograms of food distributed. Those measures are useful, but they don’t entirely capture what it means to have somewhere to go.
A meal can provide nourishment, but the place where it happens can also provide familiarity, recognition and a little stability.
I didn’t know it at the time, but these experiences would remain with me.
Discovering the community kitchen
Years later, I found myself on the other side of the kitchen.
In my thirties, I cooked for the Wednesday roast at Eureka Clubhouse, a psychosocial rehabilitation community in Hobart. Food was central to the clubhouse experience. People came together around the kitchen, shared meals and participated in the ordinary work of making a community function.
I spent approximately ten years connected with the psychosocial centre.
It was an important period of my life. I came to understand how much community activity happens through seemingly ordinary things: preparing food, washing dishes, organising a meal, making a cup of tea and ensuring there is enough for everyone.
The kitchen was more than a place to prepare food. It was a social environment.
People who might otherwise have experienced isolation could participate in something useful. Someone could contribute according to their abilities. There was an opportunity to develop relationships without everything being organised around a formal service interaction.
I began to appreciate the value of food as a means of bringing people together.
Food as a social activity
My interest in community food continued through different experiences.
I visited soup kitchens around Hobart and became interested in the communities that formed around them. I collected end-of-day doughnuts and distributed them to night shelters, eventually becoming known as the Donut Guy.
I also became involved in other forms of practical food assistance, including meals and food deliveries.
These activities introduced me to different parts of the food relief landscape. They also raised questions about how we understand people who need assistance.
Who uses night shelters? What happens to people after they receive a meal? What makes someone feel comfortable accepting help? Why do some people avoid services even when they need what those services provide?
I became increasingly interested in the difference between providing food and creating opportunities for people to belong.
There is a difference between being handed a meal and being invited to sit at a table.
Returning to the idea of community
My social work education gave me another way to examine these experiences.
I began to think more critically about the relationship between poverty, institutions, economic exclusion and the way assistance is organised.
Conventional services have an important role. Food banks, charities, government programs and emergency relief organisations provide essential support.
But I became interested in what might happen alongside those arrangements.
Could people organise food assistance without creating unnecessary barriers? Could people who receive food also participate in preparing and distributing it? Could a community meal become something more than a transaction between a provider and a recipient?
These questions brought me towards the philosophy of Food Not Bombs.
Food Not Bombs is an international grassroots movement based on sharing free food, often using food that would otherwise go to waste. Its approach is deliberately different from conventional charity. Food is shared rather than treated as something that must be earned or distributed according to a hierarchy of deservingness.
The idea appealed to me because it brought together several things I had come to value: food rescue, participation, community organising and mutual aid.
Food Not Bombs Hobart
My involvement with Food Not Bombs Hobart developed into something much larger than simply helping to distribute meals.
Over time, I became increasingly involved in keeping the initiative operating, coordinating volunteers, developing relationships with food suppliers and finding practical ways to make the work sustainable.
It became clear that a grassroots food initiative requires more than good intentions.
There is food to collect, transport and prepare. There are venues to organise, volunteers to coordinate, relationships to maintain and a constant stream of practical problems to solve.
The work is often ordinary and repetitive. Someone has to collect the food. Someone has to prepare it. Someone has to set up the tables and make sure there is enough for everyone.
But there is also something quite remarkable about what happens when these things come together.
Food that would otherwise be discarded becomes a meal. Volunteers become a community. People who might never otherwise meet sit together.
The initiative has developed through relationships with local suppliers, community organisations, volunteers and people who simply want to contribute something useful.
It has also become an opportunity to explore alternative approaches to organising community assistance.
Beyond food relief
One of the things I have become increasingly interested in is the distinction between food relief and food security.
Food relief responds to immediate need. It is important, often urgent and sometimes essential for survival.
Food security raises broader questions.
Why are people going hungry in a society with considerable food production and distribution capacity? Why is edible food discarded while people struggle to obtain enough to eat? What economic and social arrangements contribute to food insecurity? And what role can communities play in responding?
Food rescue is one practical response.
At Food Not Bombs Hobart, we have developed relationships that allow us to redirect surplus food into community meals and other forms of assistance.
The Shared Table is one expression of this work.
We also undertake food deliveries, support community pantry arrangements and work with suppliers and volunteers to make rescued food available to people experiencing hardship.
But I don’t want the work to be understood simply as the distribution of surplus food.
The larger question is how we create communities where people can participate, contribute and develop relationships rather than remaining isolated recipients of assistance.
The Shared Table
The Shared Table is perhaps the simplest expression of everything I have come to understand about food and community.
Every Saturday, people gather in Hobart to share a meal.
There is food to prepare, tables to arrange, volunteers to coordinate and people arriving from different circumstances.
Some people come regularly. Others appear occasionally. Some contribute food or their time. Others simply need a meal and somewhere to sit.
We don’t need to know everyone’s circumstances before welcoming them.
The principle is straightforward:
This table is open. No one is turned away.
I like the simplicity of that idea.
It doesn’t require someone to prove their poverty, explain their circumstances or demonstrate that they deserve a place.
It creates an opportunity for people to participate in an ordinary human activity: eating together.
I have come to think of this as an important form of community development.
The meal is the starting point, not necessarily the end result.
What the journey has taught me
When I think back to visiting Bethlehem House for lunch every weekday, I can see a connection with the work I am doing today.
The circumstances are different, and so is my role.
Then, I was someone who needed somewhere to eat. Today, I am involved in helping organise a place where other people can eat.
I don’t see these experiences as separate chapters. They inform one another.
My understanding of food insecurity is shaped by having experienced it, having worked alongside people experiencing it and having spent years organising practical responses.
My social work education has helped me examine these experiences through a broader understanding of social structures, relationships and institutions.
But much of what I know has still come from participation.
I have learned that food can be a starting point for relationships. That small initiatives can make a meaningful difference. That communities are often capable of organising practical responses when people have the opportunity to contribute.
I’ve also learned that grassroots work is not always easy. It requires persistence, cooperation, practical skills and the willingness to keep going when things become complicated.
There is always more to do.
From receiving to participating
I sometimes think about the distance between the young man who visited Bethlehem House for lunch and the person who now coordinates a community food initiative.
It is tempting to describe this as a journey from receiving help to giving help. But I think that description misses something important.
I don’t believe that people should be divided into those who give and those who receive.
We all need assistance at different times. We all have something to contribute. Circumstances change, and the roles we occupy in our communities change with them.
The real opportunity is to create places where those distinctions matter less.
Food Not Bombs Hobart is one attempt to do that.
It is a practical experiment in food rescue, mutual aid and community participation. It is also an ongoing investigation into how people can organise themselves differently.
The work continues, and so does the learning.
Perhaps the most important thing I have carried from my own experiences is that nobody should have to face hunger alone.
The Shared Table. No one is turned away.
Christiaan McCann
Further reading and related work
- Food Not Bombs Hobart – community food sharing and mutual aid.
- The Shared Table – our weekly community meal.
- Hobart Food Outreach – food deliveries and practical assistance.
- R3SEARCH – exploring poverty, homelessness, food insecurity and community participation.
- Field Notes – observations from the work and the people we meet.
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