By Shiloh Thurrowgood and Callum Ludwig
The Healesville Library’s last Dine and Shine event for the season was held on Thursday 22 June, with a theme inspired by the winter solstice.
The Dine and Shine events have been a series of free community lunches, encouraging people to get together, have a chat and learn about the issues and events happening in their community over a nice meal.
Senior customer service officer Sharni Steel was inspired by Contrada in Casole D’Elsa after a visit in 2019 and said her motto was to ‘build a longer table, not a higher fence’
“It’s brilliant and without sounding cliche, it is like a dream come true, because this started as a vision,” she said.
“I brought that into my workplace and discussed with my team whether or not they wanted to get behind it, because it’s not just a one woman show.”
The event started as a hot soup kitchen in 2022 and will be returning to the hot soup kitchen model until Healesville Library can access further funding for the next series.
Ms Steel said it takes the whole library team to pull these kinds of events off.
“Anybody can come to these events, because it’s all welcome, there are no barriers and, yeah, maybe they get behind the philosophy,” she said.
“This is the outcome of that saying that we want to do this for our community and we want to add this special dynamic into our workplace.”
The Dine and Shine events were funded by a grant from the Valley Community Recovery Committee, which was established to help support community groups and organisations bounce back from the Covid pandemic.
Paul Sheehan came along to the Dine and Shine event after being approached at Coles to see if he was interested and said it is something he would come back for.
“It is a good way to use the library and help build that sense of community, this has been really good for me and a very positive experience for my mental health,” he said.
The Valley Community Recovery Committee caters to and is made up of residents from Badger Creek, Chum Creek, Dixons Creek, Gruyere, Healesville, Steels Creek, Yarra Glen and Yering.
Attendee Sue Grosvenor said it has given her an outlet and all stemmed from stopping and speaking to her.
“It is really good because I’d been procrastinating about doing something for myself and it just gave me a sense of direction and brought a smile to my face, being able to come down here,” she said.
