15/09/2026
YOUR SAY: PURPOSE FIT NEIGHBOURHOOD HOUSE INFRASTRUCTURE AND FACILITIES NEEDED TO RESPOND TO EVOLVING POVERTY SITUATION
Since it was established in 1983 as a modest weatherboard hub for community workshops and adult education classes, drought, fires, Covid and cost-of-living pressures, have evolved the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House into a default humanitarian super centre and outreach depot, servicing greater East Gippsland.
Running on volunteers and passion, the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House, estimates that it provided 23,654 meals from 3942kg of food in August alone, through the facility’s free food foyer, Emergency Assistance, Homeless Assistance and Additional Catering Support programs.
Around 75 people a day collect items such as bread, potatoes, zucchinis and citrus from the foyer, as well as emergency assistance hampers.
In addition, the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House prepared 17203 cooked meals from 2867 kg of food in August, through their Community Table and recently expanded Remote Bush Nursing Program, which provides remote rural meals to bush nursing centres and community houses across the East Gippsland and the Wellington Shire.
‘Obviously with remote communities, fuel and transport costs have increased dramatically, so people aren’t travelling down the mountain to purchase food. So there are often isolated people in communities that can’t get enough food’, CEO Leanne Jennings said.
But with the the kitchen running all the time, refrigerators and freezers in every corner, additional community meal days in the dining space as well as laundry, kitchen and bathroom facilities for the homeless, the Neighbourhood house is forever bursting at the seams.
Leanne has been lobbying for a multimillion-dollar purpose fit redevelopment of the Delmahoy Street site for several years, with more accessible after hours homeless facilities, a loading dock and adequate office space and food storage areas.
As community poverty becomes increasingly normalised, she said that her dedicated team of volunteers do an amazing job in holding it all together, despite the challenging conditions.
She said that the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood had built a lot of trust in the community, pointing out that one of the advantages of running an unfunded, community driven operation, is that you become 100% sustainable.
‘As long as I’ve got the volunteers and the food donations, I can keep going’, she said.
