Community Care World Mission (CCWM)
Community Care World Mission Ltd is a local food relief and work skills charity, although you probably know them best for their Earth Village Op Shop and Café in Melton’s Wallace Square.
They’ve been acting on their belief that people should always have access to healthy food and social connection since 2004, opening their op shop in 2009, and café in 2017.
With a largely volunteer team and their mission to provide community support, COVID-19 threw plenty of challenges their way. We caught up with VMBN member and Earth Village Community CEO, Annie-Maree, to find out more about what is on offer and how they have emerged stronger after COVID.
Tell us about where you started and what bought you to the Town Centre?
Prior to the Unitt St/Wallace Square site, we were running social programs and counselling services from free lease space in the industrial estate. Moving into our own space was the start of us being more visible to the public, by having a location in the heart of the town.
We opened up Earth Village Opshop straight away as a means to cover new costs associated with renting a premises.
Similarly, Earth Village Café popped up in 2017 as an extension of our pre-existing kitchen and free meal events. We already had a kitchen and some established recipes that people loved, so we brought it forward to help grow awareness.
What are the vision and aims for Earth Village?
We have big dreams to impact the world community by community by caring in simple and human ways; through the provision of food, clothing, shelter, hygiene, social and spiritual connection.
Right now, our active local mission is that "no-one should go hungry". We are working to achieve this by building a community around the idea of "feeding the village”. Our Earth Village Café currently distributes bread and supplies as well as serving free takeaway meals to people in need 5 days a week.
We are also passionate about establishing relationships with other food relief organisations and hospitality and food goods providers in the area; uniting people together to reach individual missions faster and more effectively - together.
What have been some of the challenges for the Café/OpShop and how have you overcome them?
We are a predominately volunteer team and we have A LOT going on day to day! One big challenge we have is maintaining a large and diversely skilled team to adequately run each day. This is an ongoing challenge for us, recently we have been able to recruit two amazing managers across our Earth Village Op Shop and Earth Village Café. This means we now have a dedicated person on the ground 'no matter what'! With this additional leadership, we are able to have a little bit more time to also look outside and apply additional efforts towards our wider volunteering recruitment.
How were you impacted by Covid and what did you learn and change during the pandemic?
What a year! We had reduced trade like so many others across our main fundraisers which put pressure on meeting our building overheads. We were very thankful for some support from the Victorian Government, however, we were still left short.
Prior to COVID we were running three weekly sit-down free meal sessions, these were suspended due to social distancing requirements. For a month or two we were at a loss, hoping things would pass quickly, but they did not. We were aching on the inside at not being able to meet the social need that our lunches had been providing many community members for so long.
We transitioned to offering free takeaway meals (which we are still running) as a means to ensure we could still get food out to people, however; the forced social isolation was a big challenge for us, as a major part of our focus had always been on combatting social isolation and now it was essentially the law to be isolated!
We had to close our retail fundraiser Earth Village Op Shop which created significant logistical demands on space as donations were still coming in, and our entire volunteer team which averaged 65 a week prior to lockdown went down to about 5.
As a fabulous 5 however, we were able to plan a renovation, launch a new e-commerce store THE ONLINE OPSHOP, and launch delivery offerings for our Earth Village Cafe and still stay just above the proverbial water in rocky economic climate.
We also learned how to slow down and had the opportunity to evaluate programs and focus on strategic and future planning which can slip off the day to day when everything is running in high gear.
Tell us about the recent renovations and changes to the businesses
We have completely flipped our building around, having the equivalent of a house worth of walls and structure built inside!!
We are incredibly thankful for the generous support of the founder of our organisation who has generously donated time and personal resources to undertake this massive change. We now have dedicated and defined areas for our Retail, Hospitality and team areas to enable us to focus on creating impact without worrying about our previous 'all in on place' building chaos.
We are still trickling through the finishing touches working on some fundraising and labour for the remaining 20%. If you head down to see us, you will see some unpainted walls, passages without doors! and half-built changing rooms. But it is an incredible step forward and we are eagerly anticipating the end result.
What is coming up for Earth Village?
A grand reopening once our renovations are complete! An amazing time to celebrate all that has come before and the adapting we have made as a community here.
Apart from this big moment, we will be increasing our Cafe menu with a wide range of plant-based offerings, our Op Shop will be hosting some community focused styling events and within our welfare programs, we have some exciting ways for the general public to connect and support people in need easily with our 'feed the village' concept.
Wow, there’s a lot happening, is there anything else that you would like to share?
We love being a part of the Melton Community and being right in the centre of town.
Support from the community by choosing to buy secondhandfirst at our Earth Village Opshop or online through THE ONLINE OPSHOP really brings a buzz to our community onsite and makes a world of difference in our ability to make an impact.
The same goes for choosing to purchase a cup of our barista brewed coffee or enjoy our made-on-site pastries or cupcakes.
For anyone interested in connecting with us to reach our mission here in Melton - drop a line at happytohelp@ccwm.org.au or reach out to us through our social pages – Earth Village Café, Earth Village OpShop and the Online OpShop.
If you know anyone who needs support for food assistance or could benefit from being a part of a vibrant volunteer community pop down and see us at either Shop 12 Wallace Square (Earth Village Cafe) or 43 Unitt St Melton (Earth Village Opshop)
Susan Beniston
Visitor Servicing & Development Officer