VU partners with SecondBite to offer free meals for VU students

Victoria University will continue its successful partnership with SecondBite throughout 2022 providing free, healthy, frozen meals for VU students to take home.

SecondBite is a food rescue organisation that works with restaurants, supermarkets and other food suppliers to salvage surplus fresh food to distribute to people in need.

Since VU joined forces with SecondBite in July 2021, a dedicated team of VU staff and student volunteers have handed out thousands of the meal packs to students doing it tough due to COVID-19.

The service will continue to run this year twice a week from an outdoor pop-up tent at VU’s Footscray Nicholson Campus.

Registered VU students can choose up to five delicious meals that vary each week, based on ingredients available.

Food packs can be meat-based or vegetarian and include meals such as beef and basil casserole, mustard herb chicken casserole, and mixed vegetable braise with miso.

VU leaders help distribute food

This week, VU Vice-Chancellor Professor Adam Shoemaker and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (People and Organisation) Professor Peter Radoll joined the team to distribute the meals and meet VU students.

"This is a fantastic initiative that provides very practical support for our students."

"Not only is it making a difference to their lives, but it also recognises the University’s commitment to protecting Country by helping us recover healthy food that can often go to waste,” said Professor Shoemaker.

Luciano Freire, an international student who recently arrived from Brazil to study a Master of Secondary Education at VU, said the service was very important to students like him who are managing their money on a tight student budget.

“I go weekly and I calculate I am saving about $50 a week. I always enjoy the variety of food and I like meeting other students, including students like myself from other countries.”

Find out more about the free meals for VU students foodbank.