Being chair of Tūrangi Foodbank takes a good sort, Maggie

Tūrangi Foodbank chairperson Maggie Stewart is the August Harcourts Good Sort. She is pictured with Harcourts Taupō co-owner Rosie Harvey (centre) and Taupō district mayor David Trewavas. Photo / NZME

Maggie Stewart couldn't bear the thought of children not sleeping in their own warm bed.

So back in 1997 the energetic Tūrangi woman started her own community initiative to help people furnish their homes with the basics. Called Maggie's Store Cupboard, it provided household furniture for nothing to people who needed it.

But then Maggie went further. She could see that Tūrangi needed a proper foodbank to meet the needs of families who struggled to make ends meet or needed short-term help with their food budget.

There was already an informal foodbank operating in the town but Maggie saw that setting up a foodbank as an incorporated not-for-profit would allow it to apply for funding but also show where the money was going. So in 2007 she set up Tūrangi Foodbank and has been the chairperson ever since.

When Tūrangi Foodbank was first established, it helped three or four families a week. Fourteen years later, that number has not only jumped, it has ballooned beyond expectation. Maggie says now, 48 to 60 families a week need the foodbank's help.

That level of demand has an obvious knock-on effect on the foodbank's efforts to meet the need. The foodbank's annual food drive every November used to collect enough non-perishable food to last through until June. These days, it's all gone by February.

Maggie pictured in 2011 at Maggie's Store Cupboard, a service which provided free furniture and household goods to families in Tūrangi for 14 years. Photo / Laurilee McMichael

Rising costs of food and housing are hitting people hard and it's not just beneficiaries who are affected, she says. Around a quarter of foodbank clients are in paid work. Others are unemployed or on disability or invalids' benefits. The soaring cost of rents particularly - Tūrangi rents sit at between $380 and $500 a week - mean that recent benefit rises are just swallowed up by the rising costs.

"Probably half of our clients are known to us. They don't come every week and there may be six months before they come back, or two weeks and sometimes they have to come back for a period of time until they get out of something they've done that they have to pay off."

Maggie says some of the families that foodbank sees are the same ones that return regularly because they just cannot make their money stretch far enough.

"So they have to come maybe once every fortnight for the last three days of their budget because they haven't got enough to see them through," Maggie says. "And it's not the people you might think - these are working people."

While Taupō Budget Advisory Service come to Tūrangi once a week to work with families who need their help, Tūrangi Foodbank does not make it compulsory for clients to seek budget advice. However Maggie says people are asked to show evidence of where their money is being spent.

"It [the food] is not just being given away. We have a system so that the people that are receiving the food we get are in need. It's hard work getting that food, so we want it to go to the right place."

Maggie is thankful for the generosity of the Tūrangi community which allows the foodbank to keep meeting the need. While some funding is available from grants providers, most can't be used for food which can be frustrating. But locals donate regularly and some even have a regular weekly auto payment set up which provides some certainty of weekly incomings. A recent cash drive to restock the foodbank drew a good response and two friends even clubbed together to donate $1000 to the cause. A man in Motuoapa donates vegetable seedlings of spinach and silverbeet which Tūrangi Garden Club members grow and donate to the foodbank. Cam Speedy of the Sika Foundation has arranged for hunters to donate venison which is processed into mince for free and then goes out in food parcels. Miraka farmers donate milk powder via its Feed Out programme. Maggie knows where all the best local specials are and shops carefully to stretch the foodbank dollars as far as they will go.

"We need about $55,000 a year to buy food and about $110,000 for the running costs."

Maggie with some of the wild venison mince donated to Tūrangi Foodbank by the Sika Foundation. Photo / Supplied

Maggie says she is grateful for the support of the Tūrangi community, the foodbank's wonderful treasurer Brenda Sherson, the foodbank's wonderful committee and its paid co-ordinator Julie Boothby.

Maggie's partner Pat is retired and although everything she does for foodbank is voluntary, it keeps her very busy. She says taking care of children is her why.

"When I came to Tūrangi and children were sleeping on the floor instead of a bed it just grew from there. They didn't have enough food either and I used to just buy the food because I didn't have any way else to feed these families so the natural progression was to set up Foodbank.

"I can't bear to think about children not having enough to eat. It's just in me. Some children bring home stray animals, when I was a little girl I used to bring home stray people. It's something that's in my nature, it's something I can do that does make a difference to people."

And what foodbank does makes a difference, Maggie says.

"It does. Because the clients, when they come in on their first visit they might be quite down and depressed but as time goes on if they are still coming to see you, you see the change in them. It lifts that burden of not knowing what to do or where to go and being able to help them help their family better."