Recently, George Clinical’s Project Operations team in Australia volunteered at an OzHarvest program to prepare meals for the vulnerable at an inner Sydney charitable organization.

A team of 20 worked together in a city-centre kitchen to help prepare meals from donated ingredients from commercial outlets. Menus were designed around the produce available on the day and they found themselves creating interesting dishes such as beef kofta, lentil kofta with kumera salad, and spinach and ricotta ravioli. Everything was made from scratch by our team, even the pasta! OzHarvest chefs were on hand to provide instruction and lead them through recipes. “I leant a few things that I didn’t know about cooking, like making stock with vegetable peel that we generally throw out!” said Manthi Hettiarachchi,Senior Project Manager.

Learn more about OzHarvest here

The George Clinical Project Operations team chose to volunteer at OzHarvest as they wanted a team building activity that would bring together the Clinical Operations and Project Management teams, but also served a social purpose. They also wanted a program that involved food, as not only is it a basic human need, but is also used to celebrate or mark significant events.

As a result of their efforts, over 420 meals went to the needy. Before assistance from OzHarvest, the charitable organization that delivered the meals could only offer bread and jam. Now they are able to provide nutritious meals that also taste good.

Everyone had the opportunity to taste all the dishes created and so came away with great ideas for their own meal planning. They also came to appreciate how OzHarvest are able to help almost 500 different charities with what some would consider as leftovers or waste. Linda Hayden, Project Associate says, “It was very enjoyable and a great cause as well! I am definitely going to rethink the amount of money I spend on food.”

Together, the team were able to make a difference with OzHarvest, at least for an afternoon.