The community leader opened up in an emotional Facebook video. Video / David Letele
Former professional boxer turned community advocate Dave Letele says his South Auckland foodbank won’t last until Christmas after a large freezer storing tonnes of meat was deliberately turned off and a forklift smashed.
Letele took to social media on Tuesday afternoon, breaking the news, saying; “Thanks to whoever turned off the freezer off at Papsda church. Now the frozen kai we had left is all off. We can’t win man. I’m out. I can’t take this. Over and over and over.”
“How do you continue, you know? You do all this stuff and you just get knocked down again and again and again. I just can’t believe it,” he said in an accompanying video.
Speaking to the Herald this afternoon, Letele said his Buttabean Motivation (BBM) Foodbank had just received a couple of pallets of mince from one of its supporters Meat the Need and it was taken to a big off-site freezer.
“That’s when I got the phone call from our driver who said someone had smashed our forklift and turned our freezer off,” Letele said.
“All the stuff in there has defrosted so it’s been off a while. It’s a f*****g nightmare.”
Letele over eight tonnes of mince, sausages and more had fully defrosted and gone off. Photo / Dave Letele
Letele said thousands of families relying on the food will now not receive meals right up to Christmas after over eight tonnes of mince, sausages and more had gone off.
“It’s like the last straw to break my back. Things are so hard to keep everything going and then something like this happens. It’s just a kick in the guts,” Letele said.
The operation, which received $87,000 of Government support but was distributing more than $500,000 worth of kai, was supplying up to 1000 families a week.
Letele said the BBM Foodbank team were now waiting to review security footage and find out who was involved in the incident.
Dave Letele of Buttabean Motivation Foodbank in South Auckland said for many foodbanks it was a day-to-day hustle and grind to keep things going. Photo / Dean Purcell
“I’d like to have a word to them but just in terms of the impact. There’s obviously issues going on when they do things like this. There’s wider problems going on that’s for sure.”
He said the foodbank was planning to supply meals right up to Christmas and then close its doors.
“That’s it now. I’m at the point where I don’t want to continue. I have to take a moment because at the moment I’m just feeling like absolute crap.
“Things are so hard for all of us, all charities, the struggle is real.
“The hustle you have to do to keep it all going and then something like this happens ... I just have to take a moment and get a sense of where everything is at,” he said.
The community leader opened up in an emotional Facebook video.
In a video posted to social media this afternoon, Letele said this was the second time something like this had happened.
“What are we going to do? We can’t replace it so we’ll just keep what we can of the mince in the freezers we do have at our foodbank. We’ll give out the rest to the community groups we work with and that’s it. We’re gonna call it a day. We won’t even make it to Christmas. It’s just an absolute, absolute nightmare,” he said.
Letele last month said at its height, the foodbank was catering for 700-1000 families a week.
Dave Letele and his BBM Foodbank team provide fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat to those struggling. Photo / Supplied
“We are now down to between 150-200 families a week, which includes schools and a community group we support,” he said.
“If anyone turns up on our doorstep we never turn them away because we supply everything from meat to veggies plus all the other essentials whānau need.”
Letele said he would be eternally grateful to the likes of Foodstuffs, NZ Food Network, Fonterra and Sanitarium, Bidfood and others.
“But it’s not enough to keep it all going,” Letele said.
“It would take about $1 million to run it successfully and when I think about the pressure of me having to raise that type of cash, it gets to me mentally.
“It’s an incredibly hard decision, but if I don’t make this decision now, it could pull down my entire organisation. I remain focused on our hand-up model of health, education and empowerment programmes.”
