Feeding the growing demands of poverty
As a story in yesterday’s reminds us, times are tough for some of us. It has been a cold winter for those people unable to access affordable heating – the monthly power bills can seem outrageous at this time of year – or buy adequate, wholesome food or other necessities of life.
In the past 12 months, the Nelson Food Bank has provided just under 3000 food parcels to the most needy Nelsonians – an average of eight a day. In 2008, the total was 900 in a year. The demand has continued to grow, with as many as 12 of the lifesustaining parcels handed out in a day during the first month of winter.
The story reminds us of another trend: the selflessness and generosity that also exists within our community. Ideally there would not be a need for food bank, soup kitchens emergency accommodation and the plethora of ‘‘op-shops’’ now clustered in lower Vanguard St and other parts of the province.
However, the demands seem to grow year on year, and the community could do more to recognise the role played by those who keep such services going, often as volunteers.
Nayland College holds an annual food drive and this year 400 items were collected for the Nelson food bank. This is enough for about three weeks worth of food parcels, according to the organisation’s chairman Mike Gibson. This is a terrific initiative. How better to teach social responsibility, empathy – not to mean real life economics and consequences – than through a project about world poverty which then narrows the focus to the pupils’ own backyard?
Even if New Zealand might never be afflicted by the largescale, harrowing, life-or-death desperation that can ravage entire countries during a famine, this country’s growing ‘‘underclass’’ is a social, political and economic reality – one that even Prime Minister John Key has had to acknowledge.
The current definition of poverty as applied to a developed country like New Zealand is those who are unable to afford to visit a doctor, fill the car with petrol or buy adequate groceries or appropriate clothing. It is a description that fits many of us who would not necessarily identify as being poverty-stricken, but is an indicator of the continuing drift in New Zealand’s standard of living.
Some agencies say an estimated 200,000 children live below the poverty line in this country. Though some will quibble with the definition of poverty, it is a stark reminder of the challenges facing our political leaders. It is hard to see a number this large as other than a national disgrace, with huge social and economic consequences.
A childhood fed by resentment and hunger is more likely to produce an angry adult. Even to heartless number-crunchers, an economy with a growing ‘‘poor’’ class represents lost potential, debilitating waste and unproductive cost. In human terms the toll is far greater.
Most Nelsonians prefer to reflect on a glowing picture of their region: underpinned by beauty, creativity and productivity. We should not forget we are also a low-wage, high-rent, low-housing-affordability region. The food bank has just received three weeks’ supplies. It is always hungry for more.