Last night, along with 100 other CEO’s and MD’s, I participated in the CEO cook-off – an initiative of Oz Harvest that pairs celebrity chefs and industry leaders to raise awareness around homelessness and youth in crisis.
Oz Harvest do many things, but one of their initiatives is to collect left over food - that would otherwise go to waste - from the cities restaurants and provide it to people in need.
So, paired up with Andre Ursini (of Masterchef fame), we got to work preparing & cooking for some of the 1000 guests - men, women & children who are doing it tough on Sydney’s streets.
In addition to successfully preparing & proving a three course meal for our guests, we managed to raise over $1.1million for the cause, which is an astonishing amount of money.
You can’t buy the looks of gratitude on the faces of these guests. It was an amazing, humbling & gratifying experience. It takes you out of your comfort zone, which I believe more of us should do more often. It is fabulous to give to charitable causes, but nothing beats actual participation – I urge more of us in our fortunate industry to take on similar exercises like this in the future.
Andrew Lamb
Managing Director
TMS