Hungry Ghosts, Hopeful Action

Foodbank’s Hunger Report 2026 has just been delivered. Their national enquiry into the state of the nation tells us something we already know, “that hunger has become a defining feature of life for too many households”.

Families, especially single-parents, are feeling the ‘food insecurity’ hammer. The tensions between paying a power bill, getting along to a doctor and affording a meal on the table, all converge on a hard line where something has to give.

Sacrifices have to be made. Life-style becomes survival-style. Cracks grow bigger till they can’t be covered.

According to Foodbank Australia, 3.6 million households have experienced food insecurity in last 12 months. Their report for this past year also notes that 51% of renters experience food insecurity while “only 12%” of households that own their home outright face this same problem – a rather high figure for the supposedly comfortable and well-off.

At Addi Road, we see these hungry cohorts … the homeless and temporarily housed, renters young and old – and, often enough, home owners who have encountered serious illness, a relationship breakup, an employment contraction or intensified mortgage stress. The many markers of a middle class who find themselves closer to the working poor and the underclass than they ever thought possible.

Take a read of the Food Bank document linked below. Much of the information will be unsurprising, perhaps even expected – though the maths may have a disturbing resonance.

Behind the report’s analysis of poverty (using food insecurity as a thermometer) another ill is identified in one powerful sentence …. “Perhaps most concerning is the growing sense of pessimism.”

At Addi Road, we meet with this pessimism and the dangers of its entrenchment – in body and in spirit – every week.

It’s something we have been aware of for years.

Working at street level, we have witnessed struggles and pressures building up through those coming to our two food pantries in Marrickville and Camperdown; the casual chats we have with attendees at our weekly Wednesday Night Lights event which offers free hot meals and an array of free wraparound services; and our contact with appreciative recipients and helpful organisations who partner with us for our annual Hampers of Hope campaign each Christmas.

Our volunteers do the most fantastic work in maintaining all of those programs and making them successful. They meet people day-to-day and talk to them. They get to know who they are and some of the problems they face. They see the way food insecurity connects to people’s lives.

The story of the parent who puts a key into the door of their ‘home’, only to question how renting could push them on to the street at any moment as they hold on to a bag of groceries and worry about their kids coming back from school that day. No such thing as home in their lives at all. Just a fantasy of living in one.

The casually-employed worker diagnosed with an unexpected illness, unable to afford a medical specialist let alone the consequences of anything serious. What might happen now?

This city is full of stories and struggles.

Things can and do turnaround for some. But if pessimism dominates – if pessimism is a broad and realistic scenario, as the Foodbank Hunger Report 2026 suggests – what happens to each individual’s mental health and any community well-being with it?

Scratch certain people and an explosion is waiting, a bottled-up frustration or rage that can manifest itself in self-harm as much as harming anyone else. Push them and a sudden collapse can occur. It may be that such a ‘push’ is hardly more than a mild nudge … but they have been pushed so hard and for so long they have no resilience for even the slightest bump in the road.

For others, this scratch or push has already happened. They got broken long ago.

Who is going to fix the situation? Can it ever be fixed when it has gone on for so long?

On our more difficult days the organisation itself can feel like a mirror, with its own battles to stay afloat and meet the human tide.

At Addi Road, our food justice program is not funded – though we continue with it as an essential part of what we do: not just feeding people but establishing this ‘place’ here in Marrickville as a backstop when the city can feel entirely aimed against them … too expensive to live in, too dense and intense to find any breathing space to regroup and meet another day’s struggles.

Food relief as an answer to this big need, yes.

Food and recognition and human connection all part of Addi Road’s ‘culture of sustenance’ …. an evolving community space where food relief is part of something more: recognising a human being with a face and a story they can still tell for themselves; not just a number or a percentage, not just a problem, not just a condition.

Musicians often donate their services to play at our Wednesday Night Lights event. People sit down at tables and enjoy a free nutritious hot meal prepared by our chef Heather. With the added benefit of friendly conversation and an upbeat mood. It’s also a family-friendly night thanks to our Little Sprouts program that offers young children a mix of art and creative play to give pressured parents a bit of time out too. The night is multicultural and multi-generational, cutting across class to offer a genuine feeling of connection. Many who sit down with us are obviously battling; others are just lonely. Everyone leaves well-fed and in better shape, mentally and emotionally. In many ways, we become a vehicle through which they help themselves and one another too. This is the night’s secret strength. A community restoring itself.

Addi Moves is another unfunded program that we run. It involves a research partnership with UNSW School of Medicine, and the creation of a community-access gym on site here in Marrickville, with trained physiology instructors experienced in trauma-aware and culturally-sensitive practices.

It’s run for free to assist people who might not be able to afford this kind of healthy exercise, or who could not imagine they’d ever be able to take part comfortably in such a setting.

Currently there is a long waiting list. We can’t answer all the need and interest for Addi Moves. But we are building resilience with those we can help.

The picture overall is one of food relief that widens into Addi Road answering people’s needs and well-being from exercise programs through to music and art and affirming social connections.

Evolving from an understanding that food insecurity is part of a much bigger, deeper picture when poverty also depletes our health and our will.

Meaning we must answer the pressures and the hunger – and the accompanying tilts into pessimism and depression – through supporting what that it takes to stay human and rejoin a community.

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Link here to FOODBANK AUSTRALIA HUNGER REPORT 2026

You can donate on link here to Addi Road’s Hampers of Hope 2026 campaign