Caboodle FS steps up to raise funds to fight hunger & homelessness (and potentially challenge the instos)

Peita Diamantidis

The kitchen and cooking skills of the country’s top business leaders will be put on show at the annual OzHarvest CEO CookOff in Sydney on 7 March.

Sydney-based financial planning firm Caboodle Financial Services’ co-founder, Peita Diamantidis, will be donning an apron and putting on oven mitts to team up with Australia’s top chefs to raise money for leading food rescue charity, OzHarvest.

In its fifth year, the event brings together CEOs and Managing Directors from some of Australia’s top companies from all industries. Business leaders will be challenged on their fundraising and culinary skills which will benefit some of the country’s most vulnerable community members, while at the same time raising awareness about the issues of food security, homelessness and food waste.

130 business leaders and 40 high profile chefs took part in last year’s CEO CookOff. Since the CEO CookOff began in 2012, it has raised more than $4 million for charity.

CEOs are teamed with acclaimed chefs including Matt Moran, Guillaume Brahimi and Frank Camorra to prepare a three course meal for approximately 1,300 Australian homeless and disadvantaged people.
According to Peita Diamantidis, author of Finance Action Hero: Basic Training and managing director of Caboodle Financial Services, financial advisers are in a unique position to help raise awareness of causes like OzHarvest as they link directly to day to day attitudes and behaviours of Australians when it comes to money.
“As part of my research into the Finance Action Hero book series, I discovered how much food each of us waste, and was initially focused on reducing the amount we throw away to save each of us money. However OzHarvest helped me realise I was thinking too small.” she said.

“What about all the food wasted by my favourite restaurants, and by all the major supermarket chains? That is what I love about OzHarvest and that is what drove me to participate in this year’s CEO Cookoff.”

CEOs, through their sponsors, generate much needed funds for OzHarvest to continue its mission to turn surplus food into hearty and healthy meals for vulnerable Australians. The organisation currently has 30 vans which deliver nutritious rescued food to more than 800 charities in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Gold Coast, Melbourne, Newcastle and Perth.

The 2016 CEO CookOff will be held in Sydney on Monday 7 March and OzHarvest CEO and Founder, Ronni Kahn, says she is hopeful that participants will top last year’s sterling fundraising effort.

“This event brings out the best in our business leaders who stand side by side with industry colleagues and competitors and some of the best chefs in the country, united in their efforts to really make a difference to the lives of not just their 1,300 hungry guests on the night of the CEO CookOff, but the thousands of people that OzHarvest helps every year,” Kahn said.

The opportunity to stand side by side with some of the CEOs of Australia’s largest institutions has also appealed to Peita’s competitive nature.

“Small business is a major driving force in the financial services industry, and I’d love to remind the big financial institutions of that by giving their CEOs a run for their money. I know that if financial advice practices came together behind a cause we would effect wonderful change.“

Donations can be made here. Details on the offer Peita is making to those that make signficant contributions can be found at www.bit.ly/caboodleozharvest