Sam Judd: Feed the kids

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Three years ago, while working in a school in Cannon's Creek, Porirua, I was doing an educational presentation with primary school students. One of them was completely unable to concentrate, making so much noise that it disrupted the talk. Raising my volume and intensity I pushed on through to the end, where I was left realising that one kid had negatively impacted the experience for the other 25 or so in the class.

I was exhausted and asked the teacher what was going on with the child. She told me that he could be just as smart as the others, but regularly turns up to school unfed, or if he has anything, with a packet of chips and a bottle of Coke.

I realised that it is extremely difficult to improve peoples' behaviour towards the environment, when their basic needs are not being met. Studies have shown that people with a higher socio-economic status tend to have greater environmental awareness. But I also found that they were the ones who appreciated the fact that we had given up our time to go there more than others.

It was then that I decided that we should focus on delivering our services to those people who needed them most. Although raising awareness on a large scale (such as through these articles which I have written almost every week for the past three years) is important, it dawned on me that some of our messaging was preaching to the converted and that we should reach out beyond those who are already engaged with us, as they don't tend to drop litter anyway.

In fact all of you who are reading this must be at least privileged enough to have access to a computer, tablet or smart phone, which is not the case for many more people than you may think.

So on Fathers' Day, after enjoying breakfast in bed with my three-year-old, I decided to help out someone that I am mentoring. He is a 17-year-old who works with us during his community service hours.

He has been trying to move furniture into his first flat for four weeks, but no father (or father figure) is there to help him do it. So I turned up that rainy Sunday with a flat deck ute and a tarp.

We went from the state house he was living in to what I can only imagine is another. The second trip was from his partner's grandmothers' house. This guardian, obviously an amazing person, was looking after three of her wayward daughters' kids. She told me that they had grown up in and out of CYFS care all of their lives and that whilst it would be much better for them to stay with her, rigorous laws decide this for them, not people who would be able to easily see what was best if they took an interest.

I was somewhat taken aback at the brutal honesty of the situation that was being described to me so openly and I realised that this was simply a way of life for these youngsters, but what really took the cake (and prompted me to write this article) was the stepfather. He put a padlock on the fridge to keep the kids out. When they used some milk for the cereal, he would get angry saying that it was for his coffee and not for them.

To me it is clear that people such as this guy are destroying our country. What kind of cretin would ruin the chances of kids being able to learn due to such selfishness?

These young ones are just beginning their path, which could go any number of ways. They were incredibly thankful that I helped them with this task, which to me seemed so easy yet to them a big deal. I am convinced that mentorship is vital to help people find the right path and stop their life becoming a negative statistic that most of us read in the paper but never see in the flesh.

I have done over 100 days working with offenders over the past five years and I have immense respect for those people who help people get through their troubles because it delivers huge benefits for the community. I reckon that most of the offenders are not bad people, they just missed out on having positive role models in their lives (particularly from males/father-figures) or didn't grow up with nutritious food, books on the shelf at home and parents that helped with learning.

So what can we do about this?

For a start, we could stop sending all of the reject fruit from orchards that don't make it to export, to become cattle feed. Orchardists told me that they were happy to know that the rejects they grew which had minor blemishes that they didn't get paid for were going to the schools, but that supermarkets lobbied against this as it made people think that food was cheaper than they wanted.

Another idea is to donate books to charities that redistribute them to people who can't afford them. There is a direct correlation between the number of books in a household and educational achievement.

Beyond that, I think that more people should step outside of their comfort zone, stop simply scoffing at bad statistics they read in the paper and get off their backside to do something about it by becoming a mentor - Annah Stretton is a wonderful example of this with her organisation RAW (Reclaim Another Woman). To me it is one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I know it can change the lives of others too.