It's her way of giving back to the community that is giving her so much.

Ms Hamlyn is studying to become a hospitality worker at Canberra College CCCares. The program allows her to take her two-year-old son to school each day. While she studies vocational education, her son is looked after in the childcare. But the program wouldn't be possible without community support.

The food initiative, which began earlier this year, is a collaboration between CCCares and OzHarvest. OzHarvest rescues about 30,000 kilograms of food a month, mostly from supermarkets in Canberra, Queanbeyan and Yass, unwanted but still in good condition.

Their vans deliver the food to charities across the region to feed people who cannot otherwise afford it. OzHarvest delivers raw ingredients to CCCares. Under the guidance of head chef and trainer Rohan De Silva, Ms Hamlyn helps prepare the food, which is made into hearty meals and delivered to places like Ronald McDonald House, John James Village, and students at the college doing it tough.

Ms Hamlyn said before the partnership, her hospitality experience was limited to working in the college cafe making coffee.

"Now I'm getting more into the cooking side of things, and learning a lot more about cooking," she said.

"It's really good because CCCares, they pay for all the courses and stuff, so they're good to us and this is how we can be giving back."

CCCares manager Jan Marshall said the students all had one ambition, and that was to carve out a good future for themselves and their children.

"I think the young people here are really valuing the opportunity to give back to the community, because CCCares is a program that has a lot of community support and a lot of agencies who come in and support our young men and women and their families," Ms Marshall said.

OzHarvest ACT manager Dave Burnet said the charity would also start running training for young people about nutrition, cooking skills and budgeting. The NEST education program has proved popular with other charities as well.

"It's one thing to give charities food to give their client, but when you hop in and offer the client's education - they may not know how to boil an egg or make a simple salad - by the end they will be making beautiful healthy recipes at low cost," Mr Burnet said.

"It covers everything in how to break the cycle."

Mr Burnet said OzHarvest was "going gangbusters".

"We're expanding to more stores, there has been quite a focus on waste locally and a lot of people are really connecting which is great," he said.

"It would be great if we didn't have to do our job, but while there's food waste, we'll do it."