How to help ‘hungus’ kids
Over the last week I’ve enjoyed being in the Far North. No, I’m not holidaying, but working. On Sunday, I found myself at a wonderful cultural event, run in collaboration with a local hapū, who not only welcomed and entertained their guests in a beautiful setting, but fed them some delicious kai they’d provided as well.
There were some food packs left over after the event. My wife and I were charged by a kaumātua to give the food away ‘‘to anyone who would appreciate it’’.
Phone calls to foodbanks and other charities proved futile as it was a Sunday afternoon and the delicious sandwiches might be a little stale by Monday, so we went to the main street of a town and deposited the 20 or so packs next to the youth centre, with a hastily written ‘‘Free kai’’ sign jammed in.
Twenty minutes later we returned and they were all gone. Great. We were delighted but also amazed to find out later, via the local Facebook community page, that someone had spotted us, gone to the local park and told the kids about the food. ‘‘I stopped at the park and told all the tamariki if they were hungus to go get a feed but don’t bloody waste it. Your should have seen them run.’’
So as delighted as we were to offload the food to ‘‘hungus’’ kids and that the ‘‘tamariki I told had nothing but Genuine Smiles when I seen them a while ago, Chur’’, it did raise a bigger question.
In a country with food as plentiful as ours, why, in some places, do kids still come running at the prospect of free, healthy food? Are there more hungus kids around than comfortable, middle-class people like me care to admit?
The town in question had unemployment rates in the high 20s during the 1980s and 90s. Employment prospects are better now, and you even see ‘‘now hiring’’ signs. But the scars of high unemployment and years of governmental neglect remain. So, who feeds the hungus kids in these places that I’ve heard wealthy people and broadcasters describe as ‘hellholes’?
What many fail to realise is that although some businesses and better-off people donate generously to food programmes, a lot of the hard yakka is done by locals who live in these communities. Go to any community Facebook page in the Far North and you’re likely to see images of community pātaka that are regularly stocked with free food by locals for anyone feeling hungus.
Even in the most deprived communities – which are often the focus of media attention for crime, meth use or gang conflicts – you will find that Facebook requests for nappies, kids’ clothes or tools receive numerous and generous responses.
Is this also true in the poorer areas of big cities? I suspect so. As any charity raffleticket seller will know, you often find far more generous people in the poorer parts of town.
A guy in one Far North town was worried about his mokopuna walking to school along a busy highway. Appeals to local authorities failed, funding did not materialise, so he bought an old van and did the job twice a day himself until a bus service was finally funded a few years later. You won’t find his name in honours lists, but locals still cherish his memory.
Every teacher knows that hungus kids find it difficult to learn and this Government must be applauded for its school lunches scheme for lower-decile schools. But there are challenges with that, too.
Smaller operators, although there are some excellent ones, face cashflow, infrastructure and regulatory challenges, and one wonders if big operators will soon dominate the scheme, even though we all know it would be much better if money went directly into the community where the need is.
There is also the question of who decides what kids eat. As Manurewa school principal Shirley Maihi said in a recent Listener article, ‘‘School lunches are wonderful; but with 98 per cent of (our) school community being Māori or Pasifika, they need food they recognise. Cucumber dip with fennel doesn’t cut it. We know our children; let us decide what they will eat.’’ Hear, hear.
My limited experience in the weekend proved that hungus kids will happily eat healthy food if it’s familiar. And it’s interesting how dietary requirements often seem proportionally to increase with the decile rating of a school.
Surely if we can successfully vaccinate almost 100% per cent of our community, we can do the same with feeding them. The lessons learned from the vaccination campaign were that local communities know best how to solve their problems and should be given the power – and guidance and funding – to do so.
Let’s do the same on poverty and inequality, and hopefully along the way, reduce the numbers of hungus kids throughout the country. That would bring a Genuine Smile to my face.
This opinion is not necessarily shared by newspapers.