Donations ensure school lunch staples still available

An Auckland charity that was concerned it would have to stop providing staples for families to make school lunches has received enough donations to keep the service going into next year.

Only one school on the North Shore qualifies for the government’s free lunch programme, but pockets of need mean some kids are going without and it is affecting their attendance.

Each week volunteers at the Good Works Trust fill big brown paper bags with bread, a spread, a protein, crackers, fruit and some extras for kids’ lunchboxes.

The lunch packs are given to schools to deliver to families in need and cover a week’s worth of lunches for a family’s children.

When their funding ran out earlier this month, operations manager Sophie Gray urgently appealed for donations and the community responded.

She said they have enough funding through their Givealittle page to keep filling children’s lunchboxes to the end of term one next year – that’s 4930 lunchboxes.

“There’s been a real community outpouring, from people donating $15 to people donating thousands of dollars,” she said.

“That’s great, we were really worried about cutting it off as things get super expensive for people running into Christmas so we’re okay for the end of this term and term one and then we hit a massive funding hole once again.”

Good Works Trust food security manager Sophie Gray.
Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi

Gray said every dollar counted and schools receiving the lunchbox packs had expressed “enormous relief” the service could continue.

“We’ve had another school reach out to say they have a family who are continually keeping their young child home because there’s no food. The need is there and it just falls back on schools, they’re dealing with hungry disruptive children who can’t concentrate.”

She said ensuring kids had lunch had improved their well-being and attendance.

“It’s an intervention. We’ve got schools telling us that they’re seeing school attendance going from 40 percent to 80 percent for tamariki who previously didn’t have lunch,” she said.

“The fact that the lunch looks like everybody else’s is was also mentioned in the feedback. You know the kids don’t feel any shame or self consciousness because they’re just sitting there eating a sandwich like everyone else.”

It costs $800 a week to fill the lunch packs, and more money is needed to keep the service going well into next year.

“What the public’s generosity has done is bought us some time to continue to rattle the cage at MSD and the Ministry of Education around the overlooking of families who are really struggling and schools that are not eligible.”

Gray said they were also approaching grant funders and potential philanthropists to support the school lunch packs.

On the North Shore, only Onepoto Primary School in Northcote qualifies for the government’s school lunch programme, which provides lunch for each student.

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