Changing complex and stuck systems is about the hardest work there is. Everything you do can seem to have little impact, but you see something special in the future if you can just reach that change-threshold.

Amidst five lockdowns in our first 15 school-weeks of operation of a Healthy Lunch Kitchen social enterprise in Victoria, we remain focussed on demonstrating that if you create a healthy demand and supply in a system you can indeed start to change that system. Take food systems – one of the most powerful systems to tackle – how to move from a system that is unhealthy and unsustainable (now) to one that is healthy and sustainable (future).

Just by providing healthier products – affordable school lunches, ultimately at a population level, which use as much local and seasonal produce as possible – we can imagine our potential impact to:

• Lower food insecurity
• Provide fair wages to farmers, and build supply chains
• Be sustainable – low waste, low food miles
• Provide healthy nutritious food for children to boost concentration and learning
• Create new jobs & learning in a circular healthy food economy
• Build passionate volunteers in a healthy food system effort

Be socially enterprising, ultimately reaching financial self-sufficiency SHIFT – Sustainable Healthy Integrated Food Towns is stimulating a very different food system in the future for everyone. Hoping for a SHIFT @scale future.

Learn more about the Healthy Lunch Kitchen.