Koha kai network putting extra cheer in Christmas food parcels

Thursday, 17 December 2020

The Auckland City Mission says it's handing out just as many food parcels as it was during the peak of the first lockdown.

Kōkiri Marae’s Teresea Olsen won’t turn anyone away hungry from the pātaka kai. Especially at this time of the year.

The food-gifting programme, based in the Lower Hutt suburb of Wainuiomata, gives out more than 250 food parcels each week but shuns the means-testing used by the established foodbanks.

“Asking people why it is they don’t have enough money when they are on the benefit is absolutely stupid to me – you can’t live off the benefit.”

Teresea Olsen is the general manager of Kōkiri Marae, which set up its pātaka kai (foodbank) during lockdown. They produce 250 food parcels a week but are experiencing an increase in demand as Christmas approaches.

As the year ends, the marae general manager says the pātaka kai is experiencing a small swell in demand for its services.

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Kanapa Te Ngakau Te Rata,7, packs bags of pasta at the pātaka kai (food bank) run by Kōkiri Marae in Wainuiomata.

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This will be the pātaka kai’s first Christmas, and Olsen says that for the first time since it setting up, people are asking for extras beyond the basics in the usual parcels.

Te Whakapono Waitui packs bags at the pātaka kai (foodbank) run by Kōkiri Marae in Wainuiomata.

“People know we will be closed over Christmas.

“Christmas is a time of pressure for families and parents feel there is an expectation from their children – they just want to make it special.

“We’ve been getting requests for help to put a Christmas dinner on the table.”

A pātaka kai food parcel is expected to last a family of four for one week and costs more than $300 to put together, she says. For Christmas, hams have been added to the cardboard boxes, along with other treats.

“We do our best to fulfil those wishes within reason. It’s so good to be able to help.”

Despite its scheduled Christmas close-down, she expects volunteers will still be out delivering emergency parcels.

Olsen says some stories she hears are heartbreaking. A parent trying to provide a cake for a son’s birthday. A mother of seven asking for food because she has nowhere else to turn.

Kōkiri’s fledgling food programme began the day Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country would be entering lockdown.

“I received an email from local foodbanks – their volunteers were vulnerable [because of their ages], and they couldn’t carry on,” Olsen says.

“We decided to put together parcels for whānau in our community who had been getting food from the foodbanks. By day three word got out, and we started getting calls from people in the Hutt Valley, Wellington and Porirua.”

The operation became so big they had to shift the programme over the hill to the Wainuiomata Community Hall.

At the height of lockdown the pātaka kai was producing 1000 food parcels a week and delivering them throughout the region. They also delivered 60,000 precooked meals, and sanitation packs.

Olsen says the situation has settled down a lot since the lockdown period, but parts of the community are still suffering, with two-thirds of clients coming from Wainuiomata.

Julia Milne is the co-ordinator for the Common Unity Project, which has supplied more than 27,500 pre-made meals to the pātaka kai since the start of lockdown.

She says food is often the first thing that people facing hardship cut back on.

“Rent and utilities are only going up. Food [spending] is the one thing they can adjust.”

She says the marae provides an important service for an increasing number of families who are falling outside the criteria set by other foodbanks.

“The help without judgment – in a way that is mana enhancing and which doesn’t create distrust.”