We all need to eat
Six weeks ago, I thought I knew the work of food banks and what provision of food was available to our Waikato communities. I was wrong! I would like to share my learnings.
When COVID-19 hit, Community Waikato held conversations with community food providers, agencies, funders, government departments and capacity builders to see how we could help. Pretty quickly we found a role:
As a conduit and distiller of information
Brokering conversations between Civil Defence and community
Connecting agencies, providers and need
In other words, communications.
Together with a core team of people from the Wise Group and Hamilton City Council we worked together to develop initiatives and connections aimed at supporting community food providers on the ground so that they in turn would have resourcing to provide food.
We now have:
The ‘Here to Help u’ website operating in Hamilton
The Shop & Drop service operated by Pukete Neighbourhood House
A temporary central kitchen based at Claudelands cooking up meals and preparing food parcels. Funded by Civil Defence the food is distributed by key providers such as The Serve in Hamilton.
Regular communications with community food providers and supporting agencies across the region and Civil Defence areas.
As soon as we knew a lockdown was coming, Community Waikato did a quick scan (via survey/ phone call) across the region of about 100 community organisations that we knew to be providing food/food parcels pre COVID-19. Not all responded, but of those, 70% were either not able to operate at all or were at greatly reduced capacity. For many it was because their volunteers are older and/or vulnerable, unavailable to help during this pandemic.
In the last few weeks, I have heard amazing stories of resilience, determination, and effort by providers. Some have ‘popped up’ in their communities to escalate services to meet the need, such as the Meremere Community Committee who took matters into their own hands to source food. For them it was about keeping their community safe by bringing food in, rather than going to a city to a supermarket for fear of bringing the virus back. Read their story here.
Captain Jenny Collings, Director of Hamilton Salvation Army shared some statistics this week. The Salvation Army has been a long-time provider of food parcels in Hamilton. They know it well. “Just last week alone (27th April – 3rd May), we distributed 289 parcels, an approximate 578% increase from pre-lockdown. To date, during the Level 4 and Level 3 periods, we have served a total of 828 households in Hamilton. Only 157 of the 828 households who accessed help in this time were already on our system as having signed privacy waivers prior to the lockdown. We are deducing from this that we served 671 new clients.”
Those figures seem incredible, but the percentages in fact are like those we are hearing around the region. So why is that?
In the past it has been easy to make assumptions about who needed access to food. Now though, we are in a place where circumstances out of our control have forced people to look for and ask for help. Many of those people have not been a part of the social sector before and pride makes it so hard now. They are being met by empathy, as people know what to blame – COVID-19.
A combination of factors – job losses, income reduction, increase in vulnerability such as older people unable to go shopping, disabled people without transport options, carers vulnerable themselves and a large number of migrant workers on legitimate work visas but work stopped because of level 4 with no wage subsidy and therefore no pay.
There is another reason though too, that some of the need was always there, and the response to COVID-19 has shown people how they can access food.
We have heard of marginalised people; those who do not want to be part of a welfare system, older people living in isolation, those who do not have access to internet or even phone, are accessing food now. For many it is because of general kindness and word of mouth. From one community provider I heard that she had visited one house on a street, where the lady told her of the big family next door. By the time she left that street she had given out 6 food parcels. “We are a small community, but I didn’t know those households”.
Community helps community. There are the local businesses who have come up with innovative ways to help: the butcher who doubles the order for the food bank; another shop giving people a chance to buy one for themselves and pay another forward to someone else; the people with laden fruit trees picking and sharing; and so it goes on. Through frustrations of systems and processes, people who really care have found their own solutions to helping others.
By the time this article is printed we may have moved to COVID-19 Alert Level 2 and we will see some changes. Hopefully, people will be able to get to work and we will start seeing a reduction in the need for food.
There are some positives I would like to keep:
Historic competitors working together to meet need
Different thinking and alternative conversations for new ways of working
Co-creation of initiatives for common good
New connections and stakeholder relationships
And most of all, an appreciation for generosity.
Sarah Gibb
Community Advisor