The Food Store provides those receiving Centrelink support payments with an opportunity to obtain once a month a parcel of food staples to supplement their needs.
The Food Store is open 3 days every week, and it is supported by SJOS volunteers who shop for the food products, stock the shelves and work in the store. This parcel of food consists of ten (10) separate items, including eggs and cheese, as well as staple food items, such as milk, pasta, rice, cereals, etc. SJOS funds the Food Store from funds supplied by various grants, donations and philanthropic support.
Open days and times:
Thursdays: 10:00am - 11:30am
Saturdays: 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Sundays: 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Bread Bank
24/7 Monitoring By CCTV
The Bread Bank ensures that bread is available 24 hours a day via an externally accessed 2-way freezer. The bread is collected, packaged and sealed in freezer bags before being stored in the freezers by volunteers.
Transitional Housing
SJOS provides shelter in twelve (12) transitional housing units of which there are five (5) one-bedroom units and seven (7) studio units, all self-contained and fully furnished including utensils, crockery and linen.
As SJOS is a totally volunteer organisation, and due to the challenges involved with the Residential Tenancies Act, SJOS uses an outside organisation to select appropriate residents for the units. This organisation, HomeGround Real Estate Agency, is a division of Launch Housing, Victoria's largest community service provider for housing and homelessness support services. The names of these potential residents are submitted to this organisation by numerous charities and they are all in need of housing relief.
As with the rest of Victoria's community housing, nearly 40% of the residents of the SJOS Units have suffered some sort of dispute or domestic violence. The SJOS residents pay 25% of their Centrelink payment to SJOS as rent, and SJOS pays Launch/ HG REA 30% of this amount as a management fee. Unfortunately, this does not cover the total cost of rent to the parish, rates, insurance, utilities, repair and replacement and maintenance.
Occupancy of the units runs at about 85% allowing for cleaning and maintenance between tenants and annually about 40 families are helped.
Garden Club
Our Garden Club was formed in August 2018. The produce that we grow in our garden goes to our Food Store and distributed to our clients who visit the Foodstore.
New club members are welcome to join, please click here and fill in the contact us form.
