Umberto D'Oria is the manager of Pacinos Italian Family Restaurant in Flemington, Melbourne.
For many years, Umberto has noticed lots of homeless people on his daily commute to work, and he says it's not something he ever saw in his hometown of Trani, Puglia in Italy.
He always wanted to help, so over the past few years, he started donating end-of-shift pizza to a homeless people on his way home from work.
"The smiles I've seen when they opened their carton boxes made me very happy," Umberto said.
Umberto remembers a 17-year-old boy who was sitting on a bench, and after opening his carton box suddenly smiled, jumped up and exclaimed, "Pizza!".
Umberto has been in Australia for six years and last month he became a permanent resident.
He says while working in the hospitality industry he realised that on the day before Christmas, restaurants would always throw away ingredients in their kitchen as they prepared to shut down for the holiday period.
Umberto Doria prepara una pizza per i senzatetto la notte del 24 dicembre. Source: Supplied
So this year he thought to ask the restaurant owner if he could use the leftovers to cook pizza and pasta for the homeless. His manager, restaurant owner and colleagues immediately got behind the idea and on Christmas Eve the four of them stayed back to cook the meals.
After the restaurant closed at 10pm, they managed to prepare about 30 pizzas and 20 pasta servings.
"It took us only one hour to cook the meals. We cleaned the kitchen, closed up and we drove off at 12:30am," Umberto explained.
"At first we drove around the city to see where we could find some homeless who may need a meal. Then we parked the car in different spots, we got out with the pizzas and we distributed them".
"Some [homeless] were already asleep and they would have seen the surprise in the morning. Those who were still awake gave us a big smile," Umberto said.
The latest statistics from the Census from 2016 found there are about 116,500 homeless people in the whole country.
According to a survey conducted by the City of Melbourne in June 2018, there were 392 people sleeping rough on the streets across five local government areas — with 279 people in the CBD and the remaining in Port Phillip, Yarra, in Maribyrnong and in Stonnington.
He also hopes to inspire other restaurants to use Christmas or other holidays as an occasion to cook for the homeless.
"I made me feel good. I hope it was a nice little present for people who perhaps were not expecting anything, that possibly were not feeling at all the magic of Christmas," Umberto said.
"Homeless people need to be helped rather than marginalised... I think we can somehow all relate to their circumstances as we've probably all had some difficult moments in our lives at some point."
