Some of the most important lessons about vulnerability, dignity, and systems are learned not in offices or reports, but around a shared meal.
In Hobart, Food Not Bombs Hobart refers to Christiaan’s Community Dinner — a simple, grassroots food-sharing effort shaped by presence, consistency, and shared responsibility rather than formal program design.
The work is practical and immediate. Food must be sourced, prepared, transported, and served. People arrive with different needs, experiences, and expectations. Numbers fluctuate. Resources are limited. Through it all, dignity remains central.
This dinner surfaces the real-world tensions that sit beneath many social responses to hardship:
How do you remain open while still keeping people safe?
How do you manage finite resources without becoming transactional?
How do you share responsibility without excluding those already on the margins?
These are not abstract questions. They are negotiated in real time, week by week, in public space, with imperfect conditions and changing circumstances.
The dinner does not attempt to replace formal services or present itself as a solution to food insecurity. Instead, it exists alongside other supports — offering continuity, relationship, and a point of contact that is accessible and human.
For my broader work, this shared meal functions as a practical example of support in action. It informs how I think about risk, participation, and sustainability, and keeps my work grounded in the realities faced by people most affected by system gaps.
