Food Is Free Laneway Ballarat

We create safe green spaces to encourage community gathering, for food growing & sharing, and learning via workshops. operates over two very welcoming Ballarat sites - Food Is Free Laneway (305 Ripon St Sth) and Food Is Free Green Space (212 Ripon St Sth). We create safe green spaces for food growing & sharing, which heavily encourages community gathering, and result in many positive mental health

benefits. All Food Is Free spaces are run by a fantastic team of over 70 volunteers and is 100% community led. FOOD IS FREE LANEWAY is a place to connect. Situated on cnr Ripon St & Warrior Place, we are open 24 hrs a day. It is a space to leave your spare produce in our share table baskets, where our volunteers grow food with the local community to enjoy, to educate on food security/food waste, to beautify the environment via gardening, and heavily encourage community gathering for food growing & sharing, and positive mental health benefits. If COVID has taught us anything, it is the benefits of gardening and community when it comes to our mental health, which is why we dedicate so much of our time & focus on this. Come along and feel free to take whatever you need. Donations of plants/seeds/soil are always appreciated! FOOD IS FREE GREEN SPACE (212 Ripon St Sth, Ballarat) is a large community gathering space where food is grown in over 50 garden beds, workshops conducted, school tours take place etc. Our land is on City of Ballarat land, kindly donated to us by council to nurture our community via food (anyone is allowed to wander around and pick food), connection (we host many many activities & events from our big green shed), a place for food waste activities (our 12 highly frequented compost systems plus worm farms pump out high volumes of compost donated by the public who leave about 240 litres of food scraps weekly), with a heavy focus on bringing many mental health benefits to those in need and those who just love fresh nutritious food. was founded on the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay our respects to Elders past and present. FIF Inc also acknowledges all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work. In order to create a positive and engaging environment for users among our Food Is Free Inc. social media community, we ask all users to treat each other with respect. Users may disagree with an idea; however, they must be respectful of others at all times. Insults, threats or harassment of other users, organizations or employees are prohibited. will not tolerate and reserves its right to delete - to the full extent that each respective social media platform allows - any post or comment that:

- are defamatory, indecent, hateful, racist, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, disgraceful, vulgar or inappropriate; and unintelligible or irrelevant posts. We want to hear from you and encourage comments, critiques, questions, and suggestions. We ask that you simply stay on topic, respect other people’s opinions, avoid profanity, offensive statements, illegal content, and anything else that might otherwise violate our standard terms and conditions. We have a suite of policies & procedures in place for all our Food Is Free Inc. volunteers & visitors to keep our community safe, included, and healthy. Additionally, Food Is Free Inc. is deeply committed to child and young people safety and wellbeing. Our organisation:

• has a zero tolerance for child abuse
• has systems to protect children from abuse
• actively listens to and empowers children and young people
• recognises that child victim survivors of family violence are victims in their own right
• promotes and respects the cultural safety for Aboriginal children, for those from other culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds, and for children with a disability
• provides safe physical and online environments
• take all allegations, complaints, and concerns very seriously, responding to them consistently and in line with the organisations policies and procedures