Feeding hungry teens at the club

There’s no big sign saying, ‘‘Come here if you’re hungry’’. Teenage boys don’t work like that. Our breakfast club is a place to hang out, play some board games, connect with each other – and have some kai too. The best part of it for me is it’s driven by the boys. They saw that students were hungry and wanted to plug that gap.

As a principal, that feels like a win. It’s the proper brotherhood in action that we talk about as a school.

We’ve always known there are boys coming to school hungry and after Covid-19 that really hit home. We saw more boys here early, hanging around the student health centre but not saying, ‘‘Actually is there anything for breakfast?’’

The staff are really knowledgeable in picking that up and feeding them – but our year 13 students and prefects wanted to do more.

We said to them, ‘‘You can’t do this for a week, or a term, you’ve actually got to do it for the whole time. Those kids are the most vulnerable and what they’re missing is that consistency.’’

And the boys were great. They went to the local supermarket

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and asked for help, the staff all got behind it and gave food too. Initially they had enough to do it two days a week.

We live in a very beautiful part of the country, but we live in a part of the country where we feature in the top of the worst possible statistics and that’s something I think we’ve all got a level of social responsibility to help resolve and shift.

More can always be done to make sure we have happy, healthy communities where people are thriving and not just surviving.

By virtue of being a decile 5 school we have families who come from affluent backgrounds and families who come from absolute abject poverty. They live in income, health and housing poverty. After lockdown, this seems to some relentless and all consuming.

For some families, the most basic needs are just unmet. A lot of boys are under pressure to leave school to get a job to contribute to the income for their family.

As a school you want to do what you can. We’ve got a large pastoral team including social workers, nurse and counsellors, but we’re not social agencies. We need the Government to be looking at deprivation really, really closely.

It’s going to take a multipronged attack so that we’re not having families who are struggling the way some are. We’ve long had a desire to work across government agencies around whole family support.

But that’s not an overnight fix. In the meantime, it’s about charity and community.

Awareness, giving, volunteering, supporting your next-door neighbour.

There have been a lot of good things happening from Covid-19, like community gardens popping up all over the place so people who have the capacity are helping those who don’t.

We applied for help from KidsCan, and that support means the boys can now provide breakfast every day, which is really fantastic.

They don’t have to fundraise for food.

For them to be able to say, ‘‘We’ve got what we need, leave us to our own devices to get on with it,’’ is really empowering for them. It’s had amazingly positive effects on both learning and community. The boys are getting to school on time and ready for learning.

You want them to go off to be contributing members of society and if they’ve figured out that giving people a hand up is how you go about your business on a day-to-day basis, that doesn’t change when you leave school, that only starts them on a pathway of giving and community. I think it’s an extremely respectful thing to do.

They’ve left a legacy, which is now enduring, of looking after one another.

Karen Gilbert-Smith is the principal of Whanga¯ rei Boys’ High School.

KidsCan has 4500 more children waiting for support. You can help look after a child with food, warm clothing and health essentials for just $30 a month, or make a one-off donation at kidscan.org.nz

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123RF More can always be done to make sure we have happy, healthy communities where people are thriving and not just surviving.