Gang project is food for thought

I HAVEN'T had to consciously budget for years. Does that make me successful? Good with money? Or am I just paid well enough?

The debate around child poverty in New Zealand is finally gaining traction but talking about poverty among adults is still not quite as comfortable. The working poor are increasingly acknowledged as hard-working while we still denigrate the unemployed rather than unemployment.

In the past week, there have been two inspirational stories by Aimie Cronin of the Waikato Times, writing about the Tribal Huk gang who have been making sandwiches for primary school kids for more than two years.

Gang president Jamie Pink was described as growing up hungry and angry. He said: "We truly believe that hungry kids will go to school for a feed and while they're there, they can't help but to learn something."

Pink also acknowledged that, of course, feeding kids should be the parents' responsibility, "but if you've got crappy parents, you're bloody stuffed aren't ya?"

It makes me think about the parents of those kids who turn up without breakfast or lunch - they are not all heartless and hopeless. Maybe some are, but maybe some had unexpected expenses that week - maybe someone had to go to the doctor, or take a precious pet to the vet, or the car needed repairs to pass its warrant, and on the eve of payday, there was no money left for bread.

For many of us, these basic living expenses are something we don't blink at. But for some of our neighbours, it's not so rosy.

I broke the golden rule of "don't read the comments" on the article and one jumped out at me - it talked about how we'd have more starving adults if there really was poverty in NZ. That reminded me of a story I wrote in the 1990s on the implications of the introduction of market rentals for beneficiaries. I will never forget the woman I interviewed - she had three children, including twin girls who were perhaps 6, and she told me she went without food, haircuts and dental treatment to afford to look after her kids. I believed her; it was obvious. She looked gaunt, tired, hungry and her teeth had seen better days.

Like this mum, many in NZ are putting kids first. The supreme winner of the Whanganui District Community Awards announced this week was the Stone Soup group, supporting Gonville people with food, talk, sport, games, displays and giveaways, and helping them learn to garden.

Eating well on an extremely tight budget is not always easy, especially if you haven't got a garden or access to cheap meat from the family farm, or can't afford the petrol to get to bulk bins or local vege suppliers.

This week Greens co-leader Metiria Turei inherited Hone Harawira's Feed the Kids bill. Cartoonist Sharon Murdoch satirised the Treasury response with a sketch of two officials discussing the proposal: "Food in schools does not give us better educational outcomes. It just gives us fewer hungry kids," said one. "Snort! Fewer?" the other replied. "That's not even a number! Look, can we discuss this later? I can't think straight till I've had my breakfast."

A related view read on Twitter this week by @PeterPannier: "Imagining a time-travel conversation with a hunter-gatherer: "Yeah, we domesticated crops/went to moon, but large % of pop'n still starve".

So the flag debate is being funded - and I'd love to see a more authentically Aotearoa New Zealand design, perhaps inspired by Frank Hotere or Gordon Walters' artwork - but I would rather we prioritised food in schools for hungry kids first.

Pink said it best: "The sheep outnumber us 10 to one; we got plenty a good water, plenty a good resources - we shouldn't have 270,000 hungry kids. Sooner or later, something has to be done and if people like us - who are not exactly the pillars of society - can help, everyone else could get involved, too."

[Nicola Young is a former Department of Conservation manager who now works for global consultancy AECOM. Educated at Wanganui Girls' College, she has a science degree and is the mother of two boys.]