Two Good launches in Melbourne with a quest to change lives through food

This story starts in Sydney's Kings Cross when Rob Caslick and two mates would "wheel our barbecue about 300 metres" and grill up a feast for the area's homeless and drug addicted.

One night, a young man who was sleeping rough said to him, "Rob, you know what I love about these dinners? For one hour each week I don't feel homeless."

Those barbecue nights, sharing food (no sausages was their M.O.) with a host of different people, set Caslick on his life's course. A year later, he started an organic soup kitchen in the same area, and two years ago he created the Two Good Foundation, a social enterprise providing food, support and training to survivors of domestic violence.

Two Good's been powering along in Sydney with head chef Angie Prendergast-Sceats leading the kitchen. Last month it launched in Melbourne with chef Laura Neville leading the team.

I'm at the group's South Melbourne HQ watching Neville show a group of corporate volunteers how to make pea and ham soup. "It's a Colin Fassnidge recipe," she says. Huge vats, so big Neville has to stand on a milk crate to stir them, bubble and roil on the stove.

One volunteer chops five massive bags of onions. Another is in charge of stripping fresh curry leaves. Another scoops organic dried fruit into a jar for Christmas puddings. "It's my partner's great-grandmother's recipe," Neville says.

A supergroup of heavy-hitter chefs, including Yotam Ottolenghi, Kylie Kwong, Andrew McConnell, Peter Gilmore, Darren Robertson, Ben Shewry, Maggie Beer and Matt Moran, have created custom recipes, or shared their own, with Two Good's chefs.

Meals, such as Perry's chicken and sweetcorn soup, Ottolenghi's curried red lentil soup, or Beer's hearty, rich chicken and borlotti beans, are cooked up in Two Good's commercial kitchens, packaged fresh, and delivered (pro bono by Deliveroo) to offices and businesses around Sydney and Melbourne.

Based on the "buy one, give one" model, for every meal sold by Two Good, another is donated and delivered to a domestic violence shelter. By the time you read this article, the latest tally of restaurant-quality meals donated will be more than 65,000.

Prendergast-Sceats has been with Caslick from the start. "I love it. It's a dream job for me," she says. "I love food, I like making people happy through food and I like helping people."

She recruits and trains women for Two Good's Work Work program, designed to help its participants find employment. The women come from a variety of backgrounds, including domestic violence or homelessness due to mental health or drug addiction. Those chosen for the Work Work program may never have held down a job, have lengthy gaps in their CVs, or have zero work history in Australia.

"We hire women no one else is going to hire," Prendergast-Sceats says, "but they have to be work-ready and able to work in Australia." By work-ready, she means mentally and emotionally capable of work, and fit enough to handle the demands of a kitchen.

It's a tough gig, training a team of six women with little to no experience. "It's really hard because ultimately we have a business to run and a food product to get to customers who are paying for that, so there are certain expectations," Prendergast-Sceats says. "But the women come to us because they're ready to work, they want to work, they want to change their life's trajectory."

A big part of the program is instilling in its participants the soft skills, "things you take for granted if you've been working your whole life", Prendergast-Sceats says. "Turning up on time, reading a roster, reading your emails to make sure you've got your roster, wearing a uniform, making sure that's clean ... " along with taking initiative and problem-solving.

"They come to us very shy, with no confidence, completely lacking any sense of self-worth. They don't value themselves," Prendergast-Sceats says. "They say sorry all the time. I'll say, 'No, don't say sorry,' and then after a couple of months they're telling me what to do. It's quite amazing to watch that change but the women always say to me, 'I just needed someone to give me a chance, thank you so much'. I feel very blessed we can help them along that journey."

According to StreetSmart, a charity working to end homelessness in Australia, the fastest growing demographic of people experiencing homelessness is single women over the age of 55. Two Good's program tends to focus on women 50-plus, but ages can vary. The current group in Prendergast-Sceats' kitchen spans 24 to 52.

At the end of their time in the Two Good kitchen, many of the trainees are reluctant to leave, as they feel secure and safe in the community they've helped to create. "They often refer to us as their Two Good family," she says, "That's really touching for me. It means I'm doing the right thing."

Every day the team sits down to lunch and it's this single act, "commensality" – the practice of eating together – Caslick and the chefs credit to Two Good's success.

"I believe you can change people's lives through food," says Prendergast-Sceats. "It doesn't mean teaching them to be a world-renowned chef by any measure, but it's the way commensality works, coming around a table, eating together, cooking together, and that effect it has on a group."

It's during these lunches, or around the chopping board in the kitchen, the women's stories come out.

Prendergast-Sceats tells of "one lovely woman" who came from Fiji for an arranged marriage. "Her husband was never physically abusive but he used to go to work and lock her in the house every day," she says. "He used to have cameras all around the apartment to monitor her every move. She was never allowed outside without him."

Eventually her husband removed their six-year-old son, claiming custody. "She is going through a huge journey trying to get the custody back of her son. She's managed through the courts to get him one or two days a week but it's huge. She'd never had a day without him."

Financial abuse is often a big part of domestic violence and Prendergast-Sceats reckons it can almost be the worst form. Women have shared with her their fears of leaving a "safe" situation. "They say, 'I've got a roof over my head, I have food on the table. If I leave, I've got nothing, I've got no money in the bank'. I've had women who've stayed with their partners, despite physical abuse."

Another woman was unable to come to work because she'd been abused. "Her boyfriend beat her up one day and the following week she had to take her mum to hospital because her husband beat her mum," Prendergast-Sceats says. "You hear about these long-term, ingrained traumas and you think, 'How can anyone rise above this?' But they do and their strength is to be admired."

For Prendergast-Sceats and the team, it's hard not to be affected by these stories and important not to overstep emotional boundaries. Recent National Australia Bank foundation funding means Two Good can employ a social worker next year to help support the women and the workers, which she says is "a vital next step".

Every woman who has participated in Two Good's Work Work program has found long-term employment, from working at from working at grocery chain Harris Farm Markets or foodservice company Compass Group to small, independent cafes and restaurants such as Lankan Filling Station and Two Chaps, both in Sydney.

So far, 23 women have successfully completed the Work Work program. The goal is 24 women a year through the program in both Melbourne and Sydney (six women every three months in each location), referred through the shelters they live in.

It seems small doesn't it? "We dream big but act small," Prendergast-Sceats says. "People want to take a big-picture look and say, 'Well, you're only helping six women at a time' It might be six women, but then it's another six women, and another six women."

She sees significant changes, but at a micro level, where a participant arrives "lacking in any confidence and self-worth" and gradually gains skills and financial security, giving them the ability to find a job, find an apartment and keep it all running by paying bills and turning up to work.

"One woman said to me, 'I just feel like a normal person. I can see myself going on family holidays, and maybe one day owning my own home,'" Prendergast-Sceats says. "That normality might seem boring to some but it's an extraordinary life to them."

Two Good's Work Work program kicks off in Melbourne early next year. The distribution of meals in Melbourne has already started. Corporations can get on board by buying lunches or participating in volunteer days where their teams cook the meals that are distributed to shelters.

See twogood.com.au for details.

Two Good's bliss balls

INGREDIENTS

320g dried fruit mix

300g cashews

40g coconut oil

160g peanut butter

100g golden syrup

100g oats

30g almond meal

70g cocoa powder

70g pepitas

40g chia seeds

160g desiccated coconut

METHOD

1. Finely chop the fruit and the nuts. You can pulse in food processor but be careful not to end up with paste.

2. In a fry pan over medium heat, melt coconut oil with peanut butter and golden syrup.

3. Mix the warm wet ingredients with all of the dry ingredients including nuts, dried fruit and one third of the desiccated coconut.

4. Roll into small bite-sized balls and then roll in the coconut. Can be kept at room temperature or in the fridge if you can resist eating them all.