Our hungry kids: For Harry, charity begins at home

Reporter·NZ Herald·

29 Jul, 2011 05:30 PM3 mins to read

Harry Clark, 8, was giving money to overseas missions but has now turned his focus to home. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Eight-year-old Harry Clark gets $4 a week pocket money - but he has decided to give $1 of it towards sponsoring a child who is hungrier than him.

"I don't know anyone who's hungry," he said.

His mother, Nikki Clark, is a solo mum but describes the family's situation as "comfortable". They live in Gulf Harbour, whose $60,000 median income was the highest in Auckland in the 2006 Census.

The family sponsor two hungry children in Cambodia and Tanzania, and Harry has been a World Vision "buddy" with the Cambodian child since he was 3.

"He gets half his age in pocket money. He has just turned 8 so he gets $4 a week," Mrs Clark said.

"He has to split it three ways. There's a save pottle, a give pottle and a spend pottle."

Harry has been happy to see his giving go overseas.

"I was giving it to the church and we gave it to church-sponsored Thomas, who lives in Africa," he said.

But when he and his mother read the Herald series on "hungry kids" this week, he decided to support local children instead "because I wanted to help the kids that were poor".

Mrs Clark helped him work out the maths. "I said, 'For 50c a day we could be doing something.'

"He said, 'If I could give $1 ...' and we worked out that $15 a month is about $3.50 a week so I could make up the difference. It's us just sitting there thinking it's on our back doorstep."

Julie Helson of the KidsCan charity said Harry and his mother were among 370 people who had signed up to pay $15 a month to support KidsCan's food programme in low-decile schools since the Herald campaign started on Monday.

"I wouldn't be surprised if we topped the 500 mark by the end of the weekend," she said.

"There have been people signing up to actually support up to six children. It's been amazing.

"It was really humbling to hear about Harry who is going to donate $1 a week. It absolutely blew us away. It's fantastic to see that there are children that have that kind of empathy for other children that don't have a lot."

Auckland City Missioner Diane Robertson said there had been a jump this week in donations to the mission's winter appeal, which aims to raise $280,000 towards programmes including food parcels for 70 foodbanks around Auckland.

The appeal has raised $208,000 so far, with two weeks to go.