A scheme in Auckland which provides free school lunches to children who would otherwise go hungry is being extended to Hamilton from mid-March, with Melville Primary School the first school to benefit.
Eat My Lunch runs on a buy-one-give-one basis, where participants can order lunch and by doing so ensure another is sent to a child in need.
Co-founder Lisa King began the scheme seven months ago and since thenmore than 100,000 lunches have been given to children in 30 schools.
"In seven months we've gone from nothing to making 2000 lunches per day. At first we thought we would just be making 50 lunches a day so we had no idea how big it was going to get in such a short period of time," she said.
"Every time you buy a lunch we give a lunch to a decile one school child who would otherwise not have lunch."