Hard-up families from as far afield as Waikato and North Shore are turning up at a Mangere food parcel centre for help. Rowena Orejana reports.
Margaret (not her real name) is a Maori single parent with nine children. The Mangere resident is a really good mum, but with 10 mouths to feed, it takes a lot of manoeuvring to stretch her income. She has resorted to buying on credit from shop trucks that crawl along her street offering food at ridiculous rates.
Recently, she asked Mangere Budgeting and Family Support Service for food parcels.
The number of families asking for help from the service has spiked 67 per cent in the year ending in June compared to the same period the previous year, says Darryl Evans, the service's chief executive.
"Budgeting has always been the number one core service we deliver, and it always will be, but we have now more requests for food than we ever had."
He says the huge number of redundancies, particularly in Mangere, from where a lot of manufacturing firms have shifted operations to Asia, has hit the residents hard. Job losses, plus rises in GST, fuel and power prices, are common reasons why people need to line up for their food parcels.
"New Zealand is not a Third World country and yet you have Third World living standards here," Mr Evans says, citing Otara, Mangere and Clendon.
But people from outside South Auckland are also finding their way to the service's doorstep from as far as the North Shore and Hamilton.
"Our location [Mahunga Drive] is more discreet," he says.
Mr Evans explains the food parcels are given only to families who show a willingness to work with the service. "We put criteria in place so we can spread the food far and wide. When you make a first request, we would give anybody a food parcel. However, we don't want to be a crutch, we want to be the solution.
"To qualify for a second, third and fourth parcel, we need to see that you want to make a change in the way you live," he adds.
The Mangere Budgeting Service offers a holistic, wraparound service of budgeting, financial literacy, housing, cooking, family strengthening and advice, plus opshops and food banks.
"The one complaint we hear consistently, and why people are getting frustrated, is they have to tell their story 50 to 60 times [to different agencies] before they get help. If they come to an organisation like ours, they tell their story only one time."
He says Margaret still has a way to go but the service is making inroads with her famil. A lot of it has to do with financial education.
"I still believe we are making a difference one family at a time," he says. "We've just worked with a family that we've closed up yesterday. When I see where they were 12 weeks ago to where they were yesterday, that's a very different family."
On a noodle budget
Mangere Budgeting and Family Support Service recently surveyed 1000 clients to see how much they spend on food a week.
"The average family with three children should be spending close to $205 on food," says Mr Evans. "Our survey of 1000 families showed they were spending an average of $83.33 on food a week. That's $16.60 per person per week."
With this meagre amount set aside for food, two-minute noodles become a cheap alternative. "This is why we are also running cooking classes. It is the same problem as post-war 50 years ago. We have to make the most of what we have."
Nourish, educate, restore
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