When OzHarvest decided to establish a presence in Tasmania in June 2024, there was no warehouse to store food, no fleet to move it, one staff member, and no local blueprint to follow. What there was, was a question worth asking: what does this community actually need, and who is already working on it?

This session is a candid and practical account of how OzHarvest Tasmania was built not from infrastructure or institutional funding, but from relationships, radical openness, and a deliberate decision to treat every organisation working in the same space as a collaborator. State Manager Jenn Heggarty will share the honest story of how the original plan was almost immediately overtaken by what she learned on the ground, and why listening turned out to be the most powerful operational tool she had.

Better Together is not just a theme for this session; it is the entire OzHarvest Tasmania model. From the in-kind corporate partnerships that unlocked resources no grant could have provided, to the inter-sector collaboration that brought the major operators in the state together, this talk demonstrates what becomes possible when organisations choose generosity over territory.

The results speak for themselves, close to a million meals delivered, nearly ten thousand students reached, and a growing network of partners who believe that community outcomes matter more than organisational credit.

And this, it turns out, is just the beginning.