Helping hands as school starts
It’s an exciting time for children heading back to school in the next couple of weeks, but many students will be going to school without basic necessities.
Food, shoes, school needs, and basic healthcare are few of the many things children will be going back to school without; however, thanks to local and national organisations, this number is decreasing.
The Kai Kitchen and Donation Station, two highly recognised nonprofit organisations, will be helping where they can.
Founder of both, Rochelle Steer, said she had stationary packs, uniforms and lunches to provide to help start the year off for children in need.
‘‘We will just hold off until school starts and then the school can tell us if there’s a child in need,’’ she said.
Steer has limited stationery packs to offer because there was no funding for them, but has given many uniforms to the children who need them and was preparing a ‘‘guestimated’’ amount of lunches.
The school uniforms come through the Donation Station and Steer hopes the cycle will continue.
‘‘We’ve had a lot of people use our school uniforms, which is cool because it goes around and when those kids grow out of that uniform it comes back to us,’’ she said.
The Kai Kitchen then prepares a certain amount of lunches which schools can confirm their amounts of need by the end of the week.
KidsCan, which is a national organisation, provides necessities to lower decile schools.
They offer a range including food, raincoats, shoes, and basic health and hygiene items.
There are 10 schools in Taranaki which the organisation help - four of which are in South Taranaki - with one on the waiting list.
KidsCan CEO and Founder Julie Chapman said there was a responsibility we all shared to ensure the children in our communities thrive so they ’’have the chance to grow into contributing members of society’’.
‘‘I think most New Zealanders’ would agree that it’s not OK that so many of our children are going hungry and without the basics through no fault of their own,’’ she said.
KidsCan took on board 100 new schools in 2016 and now supports 58% of all decile 1-4 schools in New Zealand.