This year it is estimated 370,000 Victorians will, at some stage, not know when or where their next meal is coming from. In the past older people living alone, young homeless people and single parents have been among the most common groups going without enough food.

Now it is increasingly the working poor. They have a job and a roof over their heads, but once they have paid the rent or mortgage, petrol, electricity and other necessary household expenses they are unable to afford to feed their families three meals a day. And the rising cost of living, including petrol, rental accommodation, water and power, are making it difficult for many families to afford food; especially as food prices also steadily increase.

Each year Victorians throw out 700,000 tonnes of food - that's the equivalent of 28,000 supermarkets. Too much of this is fresh and perfectly fit to eat. Good food is thrown out for several reasons, including being labelled incorrectly, being close but not past its best before date, and having damaged packaging.

The cost to businesses of sending food to landfill has increased markedly in the past few years. This has caused many businesses, including supermarkets, to rethink what they do with their surplus fresh fruit, vegetables, meats and other items. Many of them are offering this surplus to charities.

The problem is that many of the charities don't have the capacity to accept this food. And this is despite having a growing number of people knocking on their doors for help. Charities are lacking the fridges, freezers, cool rooms, food transport vehicles, staff to co-ordinate volunteers and other means to handle these food donations. This limits the amount of fresh food and healthy meals they can accept and hand out.

The money raised through Feed Melbourne, a joint venture between Do Something, FareShare and Leader newspapers, will go to food charities so they can receive meat, vegetables, fruit and prepared meals that require refrigeration. Donations will enable them to distribute this type of food to those who need it most.

To date, Feed Melbourne has raised close to $290,000.

To donate to Feed Melbourne click here.

Adapted from the Feed Melbourne website www.feedmelbourne.org.au