Andrew Ferrier and Beatrice Faumuina dropped in yesterday to help serve breakfast at Wesley Intermediate. Photo / Greg Bowker Expand

Andrew Ferrier and Beatrice Faumuina dropped in yesterday to help serve breakfast at Wesley Intermediate. Photo / Greg Bowker

One of New Zealand's highest-paid executives came face to face with poverty yesterday when he helped serve breakfast to about 100 hungry children in Mt Roskill.

Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier, reported to have been paid between $3.62 million and $3.63 million in the year to July, joined discus-throwing Olympian Beatrice Faumuina to serve milk and Weet-Bix at Wesley Intermediate, where Faumuina studied in 1986-87.

Faumuina, who is training to attend her fifth Commonwealth Games in India next year, said she hoped to visit many of the schools in the KickStart programme.

"We're giving them an opportunity to share with their friends in a safe environment," she said. "Society has changed."

The Paediatric Society has released a "children's social health monitor" showing that children in the poorest 10th of the population, such as those at Wesley, were three times as likely as those in the richest 10th to be treated in hospital in 2004-08 for diseases linked to poverty.

These included skin and breathing conditions.

Aroha Ireland, the girl taken to Waitangi by National Party leader John Key after he called her road a "dead-end street" in 2007, was then a student at Wesley. She has now gone on to Mt Albert Grammar.

Wesley principal Nigel Davis said the Life Centre Trust started offering breakfast at the school seven years ago when teachers found children turning up with empty stomachs.

"We got to the stage where the money was running out and we got a letter from Fonterra saying we're offering you free food and milk," he said. "It was a godsend."

The $750,000-a-year Fonterra scheme KickStart, run jointly with Weet-Bix maker Sanitarium, now provides milk and cereal to 12,000 children at 300 schools serving the poorest 40 per cent of the population.

Mr Ferrier said Beatrice Faumuina had been appointed an "ambassador" for the scheme to encourage other schools in the target population to take it up.

"There are about 1000 schools in that group. It would be great if we could get them all to participate," he said.

He said he asked one boy yesterday what he normally had for breakfast when he didn't come to the school breakfast.

"He said, 'I don't have any.' It made me feel we are doing the right thing."

Other children, who eat the KickStart breakfasts on Tuesdays and Thursdays, said they did eat at home other mornings.

Rochelle Hingaia, 12, said her mother woke her up on KickStart days in time to get to school for pre-breakfast 6.30am fitness classes, which were started four years ago.

Rangi Moeua, 11, said her parents got up early anyway to go to work so woke her in time for the fitness class.

"We have swimming," she said. "It's better when you're exercising."

Mr Davis said he was stunned when he started the early-morning fitness classes.

"I thought we'd get one or two. We ended up with half the school on the first day."

SEE ALSO
www.kickstartbreakfast.co.nz

By Simon Collins | Email Simon