Katikati students in House colours brings cash for Foodbank

Principal Carolyn Pentecost hands over more than $870 to Brendan Gibbs for the Katikati Foodbank.

Ninety per cent of Katikati College students turned out in their house colours to support a colourful mufti day which raised more than $870 for the Katikati Foodbank.

College principal Carolyn Pentecost handed over the funds to Reverend Brendan Gibbs from the Reachout Trust on Tuesday. The Combined Churches Katikati Foodbank is part of the trust's mandate. He says the funds will be used to buy more food.

Deputy principal Simon Finnimore started the idea by inviting students to wear mufti on June 5 in return for a gold coin donation. The event was publicised in school notices and the student house leaders also helped out.

School houses, Mulgan, Stewart, Macmillan and Gledstanes, are an important part of the school's history and aim to foster pride. House colours, blue, purple, red and green, are worn at sporting events to show support.

Katikati College students wear their House colours for mufti day.

Brendan says one of the expensive buys at foodbank is meat.

"We have been really blessed that we've got pork and had to get an additional freezer."

During Covid-19 the Government bought surplus pork for the country's foodbanks since independent butchers were not allowed to open fully for retail customers during alert levels 4 and 3 restrictions, and to ease the animal welfare crisis.

Brendan says they were given a whole lot of cans by the school too which have gone to the foodbank.

All the bread at the foodbank is given from Countdown supermarket, "which is really great", he says.

"During lockdown we took it to the local marae and the RSE workers, but we knew it would come to an end once kiwifruit finished and the workers had gone."

After a brief chat with Carolyn at a recent celebration of the Community Services Covid-19 Response group, Brendan told her he had some bread in the boot that day which he was happy to share with the school.

So three to five banana boxes of buns, sliced bread and pizza bases were given to the college.

Carolyn says: "It has helped our food technician and learning centre manager Maxine Miller. She has the students making soup for us once a week with buns. And the pizza bases are being used for fundraisers for our sports teams."

Full of praise for Bernie Rench at Countdown, Carolyn says he is an "amazing manager with such community support".

Businesses in town have been generous during lockdown with donations of $2000 to $3000 to the foodbank and the trolley in Countdown is always stocked, says Brendan.

Over the next few weeks he anticipates the demand for food parcels will go up with a lull in jobs for RSE workers while waiting for kiwifruit pruning to start.