By Gwyn Lim

Village Mosaix, a Kelvin Grove based charity group feeding 160 people each week, has reopened after COVID-19 forced it into a temporarily closure.

The group has provided free meals since 2018, but the pandemic put the charity’s services to a halt until food distribution safety could be ensured when COVID-19 restrictions eased.

Village Mosaix supports people of all ages, but Director Sam McGeown said it currently focuses on international students who aren’t getting adequate support during the pandemic.

“They were the ones that weren’t getting any direct support from the government, a lot of them had lost their jobs, a lot of them didn’t have any money, they couldn’t get back home to their own country,” he said.

These free meals have indeed helped international student Joel Ng, who shared he’s been hit by falling employment rates.

Mr Ng explained: “being an international student I have to really watch my budget and my expenses, so like, Village Mosaix has helped me a lot with like helping to ease the load on providing meals for myself especially now that it’s like really hard to find a part-time job.”

The charity has been able to distribute meals through supplies from the Food Bank and OzHarvest, as well as other monetary donations.

Ultimately, Mr McGeown explained that creating common ground for community members from all walks of life is at the very heart of the charity.

“The heart is the same – we want to get people from different backgrounds to mingle together,” he said.

With this motivation, he welcomes everyone to visit Village Mosaix for a meal, or even help out by volunteering.

Village Mosaix is open to members of the public who wish to support them or drop by for a meal every Wednesday night.