Gives back: Making sure families are fed

GIVING BACK: Amy McGillivray helps out at Good Neighbour Food Rescue

Pre-schoolers crowd around low tables on the deck outside the Merivale Whanau Aroha Centre as they devour plates piled with hangi while others dart in and out of the legs of family members there to share the meal.

About 40 families and supporters of the community-based early childhood centre are at the kindergarten to see the children's work and enjoy a hangi to celebrate Matariki.

I balance a plate of food as I watch families from the community chat, laugh and catch up on what is happening in each other's lives.

Good Neighbour Food Rescue founders John and Jackie Paine, and Lavina Good also stand back and watch, satisfied they are able to help in some way.

For the Food Rescue team this is what it is all about - bringing communities together by providing organisations with the food they need to make sure families are fed.

"That's the best thing all the interactions," Mrs Paine says.

It is the second-to-last stop in my day volunteering with one of the city's newest charities and it's easy to see the difference it is making.

Many of the centre's children were arriving every day without breakfast or lunch until Good Neighbour Food Rescue got involved.

Twice a week the Merivale Whanau Aroha Centre picks up boxes of food from Food Rescue's depot to help give the children breakfast and lunch.

For the hangi, one of the centre's two major events each year, the Food Rescue team provided the bread, butter, onions and kumara.

Food Rescue collects food that cannot be sold by businesses but is still safe to be eaten and donates it to charities throughout the Western Bay to help them look after those in their care.

The charity has only been operating for about four months but has already saved more than 5000kg of food - which would have been dumped - and distributed it to nine Tauranga community organisations.

Each kilo is worth about $7 and equates to about three meals.

GIVING BACK: Good Neighbour Food Rescue founders John Paine and Lavina Good sort through a day's donations.

"That's around 15,000 meals and over $35,000 we've just put back into the community," Mr Paine says.

The Paines and Mrs Good met last year after they both contacted Wellington organisation Kaibosh to discuss setting up a similar operation in Tauranga.

Just months later they are up and running with dreams of being able to help dozens of local charities continue the valuable work they do in the community.

So far Brendan Good, owner of Brookfield New World, and Dean Waddell, owner of Tauranga Pak'n Save, are donating their waste but already nine charities are reaping the benefits.

I START my volunteer day at the Paines' home where I am given an overview on the organisation and what they hope to achieve.

The organisation's motto is "no waste, no hunger", Mrs Good says.

"If it's good enough to eat, eat it," she said. "We give it to charities. They tell us what they need. They give it to the people."

Each organisation has provided the team with a list of the food they are always in need of and make sure to update them if there is something they are desperately short of, Mrs Paine says.

"They know their community so it empowers them to help their communities in a way that's useful," she says.

A St Vincent de Paul volunteer has been making 140 lunches a week for school children for the Loaves and Fishes programme but was struggling to pay for it before Food Rescue began donating muesli bars, spreads and lunch-box items.

The project is also about getting to know those who live around you and starting to see the need outside your family, Mr Paine explains.

"We're keen to get over those barriers in society and help those in need," he says.

"There is an inbuilt desire within all of us to make a difference for someone else. The problem is we often don't know who or where."

The idea is so simple because it benefits businesses as well as charities by cutting down on the amount of food they pay to dump, Mrs Good says.

"The supermarkets are working through waste minimisation and they are seeing here's a way to reduce waste and save food that they are not able to sell but is still good enough to eat."

Next up we piled into cars to collect food from the two supermarkets.

All the food donated has damaged packaging so cannot be sold despite the fact the food is fine and has not yet passed its expiry date.

Before Food Rescue came on the scene these damaged goods would have been thrown out and ended up in a landfill. Now supermarket staff put the damaged items aside in boxes marked for Food Rescue and the team picks it up twice a week.

First stop is Brookfield New World. We pick up big black sacks full of bread baked in the store the day before, then collect three boxes of damaged non-perishable items.

Next up is a trip to the freezer where two crates of frozen food including peas, oven fries, hash browns and ice creams are transferred into boxes and loaded into the cars.

Fresh produce is rarely left over but today we are in luck and the produce manager lets us help ourselves to a box full of bananas that are no longer fit to be sold.

Once the food is loaded up we head to Pak'n Save on Cameron Rd where half a dozen boxes of damaged goods are stacked on a trolley waiting to be collected.

The next job is to weigh and sort the items at the depot, which has been lent to the organisation by St Peter's House.

The stacks of food donated by the two stores that morning weighs in at 306kg and we get stuck in sorting it.

Torn packaging is taped up and the food is sorted into boxes for the nine charities based on what they have told the team they need.

A large portion of the rice and cans of beans, lentils, tomatoes and coconut cream go to the Shakti Ethnic Women's Support Group. Instant meals, coffee and tea go to the Women's Refuge while breakfast food is set aside for the Merivale Whanau Aroha Centre. Large cans of food and bags of pasta and rice are boxed up for the community meals run by the Arataki Community Centre and Tauranga Baptist Church.

Other food is dished up for Te Aranui Youth Trust, the Tauranga Food Bank and the St Peters House homeless men's support.

Usually the food is collected by the community organisations but since we are headed to Merivale for the Whanau Aroha Centre hangi we deliver boxes to the Women's Refuge, the lunches in schools co-ordinator and the kindergarten.

TAURANGA Women's Refuge manager Angela Warren-Clark can't stop singing praise for Food Rescue as we unload four boxes of food worth about $300.

The food is used to help the women and children in the safe house, and provide clients with hot drinks and biscuits after escaping from violent situations. Cleaning products are also needed to keep the three showers, two baths and five toilets clean.

"That supports our women financially as often they are also paying rent [at their own homes]. The women in the safe house pay for their own food. It alleviates the stress and worry," she says.

"We often get chocolates. Who cares if it is in a crumpled package or if the chocolate is broken? It's a remedy. It's a healer, chocolate. You can't really quantify that stuff."

Mrs Warren-Clark says the donations mean more money is left to put towards the on-going costs of keeping the organisation running.

"They are just really fabulous. They are good-hearted people and it's so clever to save the environment and support our families."

It's still early days for the organisation, which is waiting on funding to be able to employ Mr Paine to run and co-ordinate the operation fulltime.

Food Rescue already has about four charities on a waiting list, which they are not yet able to provide for but Mr Paine is looking to get other supermarkets as well as cafes, produce stores and bakeries on board.

There are about four volunteers who help regularly with pick-ups and sorting on Tuesdays and Thursdays but the plan is to be picking up and distributing food daily with the help of a team of volunteers who donate a couple of hours every fortnight.