The following blog post was written by Avanade alum Debra Underwood.

Avanade Australia has a strong commitment to Corporate Citizenship, and our recent Cooking for a Cause initiative is a great demonstration of that. This July, volunteers across the country teamed up with Avanade's charity partner, OzHarvest, to learn about food wastage and how this food can be put to good use feeding those in need. What a privilege for our people to understand how this fantastic organisation operates. The statistics on food wastage in Australia are astounding and the work that OzHarvest does to address the issue is truly admirable. 

Teams from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth got busy in the kitchen, transforming rescued food into hundreds of restaurant quality meals that were then delivered directly to disadvantaged communities. Enthusiastic chefs learned about the huge volume of food being wasted in the hospitality industry, bonded over the creation of some delicious meals and took away some practical kitchen skills.  

Our own Sales Operations Lead, Nathalie du Preez, was one of the volunteers in our Brisbane group. She shared that "this was the best team building activity I've ever done with any organisation. OzHarvest has such a fantastic mission and is an amazing company. We get to give back and make a real difference in the community and have fun at the same time. Cannot recommend this highly enough, really awesome experience.”

April Nazario, an Infrastructure consultant from our Sydney team had a similarly positive experience: "I really enjoyed cooking with the Avanade Team. Aside from cooking the lasagne with LOVE, I now know how to cut onions better. Thank you for the opportunity to serve the community." 
 

The great feeling of giving back to the community is just one of the many good reasons Avanade Australia has expanded our corporate citizenship initiatives this year. We have seen unprecedented generosity from staff who have been participating in corporate volunteering events, community support, fundraising and workplace giving activities.

More about Oz Harvest: Founded in 2004, OzHarvest is Australia's leading food rescue organisation with a driving purpose to Nourish Our Country. To date, over 60 million meals have been delivered to people in need and 20,000 tonnes of food saved from landfill. Find out more at www.ozharvest.org.