Kombo is more than just South Sudanese meal. For some in Melbourne, it's been a lifeline

Ayuen Autiak (left) and Alwal Madut prepare ingredients for a large batch of kombo.(ABC News: Kristian Silva)

Monica Majak carries a five-kilogram slab of beef — the size of a bowling ball — and sets it to boil inside a pot that's so large it requires two burners.

Her friends join her to strip hundreds of large bean leaves, before chopping okra.

They add a dash of spices, a sizeable dollop of peanut butter and salt to the meat mix, and after stirring it all together they shut the lid.

A few minutes later, Ms Majak grabs a spoon for a quick taste test.

"Yes, it's perfect," she says with a grin.

The end result is kombo, a traditional dish from South Sudan that is served with an injera flatbread and is best eaten with your hands.

The large batch is quickly packed into containers and will be delivered from this Sunshine West kitchen to households across the city.

During Melbourne's second wave of the pandemic, kombo became more than just a meal for some in the South Sudanese community. It was a lifeline.

Ms Majak and members of the Sudanese Mothers Coalition of Victoria delivered kombo to people forced to self-isolate. In some cases, there were homes filled with up to 10 people.

During the early stages of the second wave, Ms Majak said families they encountered had run out of food.

On one occasion, she received an urgent plea for help from a mother on Facebook who had eight children in her house and had not eaten for two days.

"Seeing my people suffering like that and I can't help them, I was feeling very down. When I was delivering the food for these people who are struggling, I was very happy."

For the last decade, Ms Majak's group has been working to improve the lives of the South Sudanese in Melbourne, a largely refugee community that has had well-documented challenges with poverty and is over-represented in youth crime statistics.

The problems are complex with no easy solutions, but Ms Majak believes it will take a joint effort between community leaders and governments.

"We really need them to come closer to us," she says of the disengaged South Sudanese youth.

The Sudanese Mothers Coalition is one of the multicultural groups around Melbourne who received funding from the State Government during the pandemic.

The Government allocated $69 million towards pandemic-related projects in November's State Budget, and is now providing an extra $18 million to the CALD Communities Taskforce, which was set up to work with multicultural and religious groups.

Multicultural Affairs Minister Ros Spence said the taskforce would distribute money to groups providing emergency relief, food, clothing and outreach support.

"Empowering local groups to deliver local responses — whether it's food boxes or culturally sensitive support during isolation — has been crucial and it's also helped keep community connections strong," Ms Spence said.

$3 million will go towards expanding the distribution of translated health advice, something Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton conceded the health department had previously fallen short on.

Eddie Micallef, the chair of the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria, said some migrant groups had been "unfairly singled out" when the virus began to spread.

"Many of those from ethnic communities are not even [eligible] to get JobKeeper and JobSeeker and so on. Therefore, they're struggling," he said.

Mr Micallef, a former Labor politician who was critical of how the State Government dealt with multicultural communities earlier in the pandemic, said he was confident lessons had been learned.

"Don't stand back and wait for things to happen. Get out and reach out to the multicultural communities, communicate with them in a way that they're able to respond to and understand," he said.

"Interpreting in one or two languages doesn't mean that you will get to them."