Julie Chapman

Tackling child poverty

KidsCan charity got a request for soap a few months ago. An innocuous appeal on the face of it. It was for a school up north which has had to open up its shower block for a group of students.

About 20 of those students were living rough. Another group were living in overcrowded homes and could only shower once a week. A third group lived in homes with no power and no hot water. This is New Zealand in 2018.

The litany of stories from the frontline of deep and distressing poverty is long.

But the charity’s founder and CEO Julie Chapman is no longer shocked by the shocking.

The little boy pocketing his KidsCan lunch for his mother came close, but it doesn’t do well to dwell on the enormity of their task to feed and clothe the one in four New Zealand children living in poverty, she says.

‘‘A lot of people have said we are the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff; why aren’t we the fence at the top? I always say we are both. We exist to meet that immediate need to alleviate poverty so that children can get to school and learn.

‘‘Meeting the needs of children now will have a flow-on effect.’’

KidsCan started out supporting 40 schools in

2005 working out of her Auckland garage. They are now in 709 schools across the country – mostly

1-4 decile schools. As of now 171,000 kids have access to their programmes.

It now has an annual revenue of around $10-12 million.

They will need to wait till Budget Day to find out if the Government’s $350,000 will continue.

Any business would be pleased with the kind of growth KidsCan has experienced over the past 13 years. But in this charity’s case, the need for their services represents the real and grim needs of children living without enough food to sustain them or the basics they need to keep them in school.

The charity recently reported 2650 students are urgently waiting on food, clothing and health support – a jump of more than 1000 children since this time last year.

Back at the start people didn’t think there was a big problem with child poverty, and if they did, they thought it was something the parents were doing wrong, says Chapman.

‘‘The fact that child poverty has got worse comes down to inequality in this country. Until we fix some of those fundamental things impacting on families, like housing, cost of living, we’re never going to solve it.’’

Visiting Wellington to shore up more sponsorship, Chapman is appreciating the novelty of a simple shower herself, having had nine days without electricity after winds cut power to more than a quarter of Auckland earlier this month.

She looks energised nevertheless. The blonde and freckled 46-year-old doesn’t look like she stays still for long.

Her self-imposed 12-hour days end with an 8:30 bedtime. Her life revolves around the charity and her family – second husband Cain Chapman (her teenhood sweetheart), his daughter, and her five cats and three dogs.

She’s not known material or financial hardship herself but she’s always been a person who likes to get things done, she says.

‘‘If I see an issue or problem I think I can help address then I’m going to find a practical way to do that.’’

The story of her ‘lightbulb’ moment that was the genesis for KidsCan is oft told.

A teacher friend mentioned to her that some students didn’t come to school when it rained because they didn’t have shoes or a raincoat. And that was it. Chapman had the bit between her teeth.

After a very ‘‘unsophisticated’’ evaluation with

80 low-decile schools she was surprised to learn that thousands of children were missing out on those basics.

‘‘I’d thought it’d be a few hundred going without but the response we got was amazing. There were thousands of children that were missing out on everyday things that we all need to get started in the morning.’’

Chapman was raised on Auckland’s North Shore and, in her teenage years, further west in Henderson.

Her father was in the demolition industry and her mother worked with him part-time.

It was a normal middle-class upbringing by parents who instilled in her a sense of empathy and a strong work ethic.

‘‘As a kid I was always a bit entrepreneurial. I was the kid going down the road picking agapanthus and trying to sell them to the neighbours. I had that spirit of wanting to get out there and make something out of nothing.’’

After finishing secondary school in Henderson her plan was to become a police officer, but her grades weren’t up to scratch so she took a job at an office supplies company.

She started out as the ‘fax girl’ but decided she liked the look of the marketing department so she took herself off to night school to get her marketing diploma.

Meanwhile, on the personal front, Chapman’s world had become mired in a destructive and violent relationship.

‘‘I was going out with a guy who basically beat the crap out of me on a regular basis.

‘‘At the time I didn’t understand the dynamics and psychology behind it and I ended up staying for 10 months.’’

If there’s a silver lining, she says, it was that it led her to work with Victim Support helping others in her situation.

‘‘I used my experience to do something practical.

‘‘I like to get shit done – that will be on my gravestone. I’ve always been like that. I’m always going to look for a solution to a problem.’’

She had moved on to work at Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust and later as marketing manager for Child Flight Air Ambulance.

But this knowledge about children missing out on school because they were lacking such basics as food, shoes and raincoats planted a seed in Chapman so she decided to do something practical.

She quit her job and while contracting for Victim Support, Neighbour Hood Support and The Warehouse she went about setting up KidsCan with a $40,000 grant from The Guardian Trust.

She’s had her battles. There were claims that a 2009 telethon that raised $2m delivered only 18 cents in the dollar to those in need hit hard. Chapman insisted an audit showed in fact 80 cents in the dollar reached their beneficiaries.

Criticisms of former staff in 2015 about champagne lunches and inappropriate use of funds were inaccurate, she says.

‘‘Never at any time has the money raised for KidsCan been spent unwisely.’’

She has learned to keep away from the caustic comments KidsCan gets from their naysayers.

‘‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things people have said to me,’’ she says.

‘‘After one negative story people actually wrote comments telling me I should kill myself. People messaged me on my Facebook saying ‘I hope you die’. It was horrific.’’

There’s a small group of people who spit and hiss at what they are doing and knock the parents of children in need, she says.

The social media landscape can be a revolting place to dwell.

‘‘I find it interesting that there are still so many judgmental people out there and I wonder, where is the compassion for these children? I can tell you that the majority of families are doing the best they can for their children and even if they weren’t, when is it the child’s fault?’’

"I can tell you that the majority of families are doing the best they can for their children and even if they weren't, when is it the child's fault?"