Free food service out of funds
The closure of a free food service in the Nelson Tasman region has come as a blow to some people, who said they were unsure where to turn to help put food on the table.
Kai With Love, a charity that supplied food at locations in Nelson/Tasman, announced via social media on Monday that it didn’t have enough funding to reopen the service this year.
Some recipients feared they would struggle to get enough food, but another free food provider said there were places people could still go to collect such items.
Shelley, who didn’t want her last name published, said her heart dropped when she found out the service was ending.
Using it had “changed her life” after an injury left her unable to work, the Nelson woman said.
“I would spend easily a week or two just living on bread and cereal. All of a sudden there was fresh food and veges. Even meat.”
The fortnightly pickup service was “wonderfully easy”, she said. People who wanted items were required to make an online request with their name and address the day before.
It was also “non-judgmental”, with food put straight into a car when the car arrived, rather than a recipient having to walk into a building while “hoping no-one recogised you”, Shelley said.
Queues for the pickup days had become much longer than when she first used the service a few years ago.
“At any time I was there, there were easily 100 cars, and that was at 2 o’clock [in the afternoon].
Shelley said she had “no idea” what she would do now.
“Now it’s a case of hunting out other services, trying to make the phone calls, trying to organise it.”
Zahra-Rose Wilson, a Motueka mother of two, said the programme provided fresh food, such as milk, that struggling families couldn’t always access through other organisations that provided food parcels.
Many of those organisations did not provide food more than once a month, she said.
The programme didn’t require identifying documents that other some organisations did, she said, adding that people didn’t always have these to hand when needed.
Many families had contacted her since the news of the closure, saying they relied
on the service. Some had said they would be prepared to pay a koha for it.
Abigail Packer, a co-founder of the programme, declined to answer Stuff’s questions yesterday about the closure, saying the small organisation had too many demands on it to respond to questions this week.
Nelson community food bank manager Neville Hadfield said the food bank operated on one parcel per calendar month per family/ whanau.
Families were assessed for eligibility by one of several affiliated agencies, including Te Piki Oranga and Whakatū Marae.
The service was designed for emergency, one-off situations, Hadfield said.
Demand for parcels had increased from about 2250 in November 2022 to 3250 in November 2023, he said.
The Nelson Environment Centre said there were still venues in the city that people could drop into to get food, supplied by the centre’s Kai Rescue programme. They were listed on its website.
Chief executive Anton Drazevic said the centre’s programme stopped about 170 tonnes of food from going to waste in landfill. The rescued items came from the likes of supermarkets and growers, for distribution through its more than 55 recipient groups.
Those groups included the Victory Community Centre and the Tāhunanui Community Centre, both of which ran a “kai shed“, with Whakatū Marae having food on-site that people could help themselves to, he said.
All Saints Church and Holy Trinity Church (Kainga Manaaki Hall) provided low-cost lunches, while organisations such as Bellyfull delivered free meals to families with newborn babies.
“We estimate that we contribute to feeding over 3000 people per week in Nelson Tasman,” Drazevic said.