We need to wrap these kids in support. No child should be hungry. We have KidsCan snacks for morning tea, so the kids are getting fed throughout the whole day. KidsCan is an intricate part of the fibre of our community.
The Warehouse and Warehouse Stationery are donating 100,000 classroom essentials to KidsCan for 73 schools from Kaitaia to Invercargill. They are also making it easy for customers to help support, and until February 7, you can add $1 for KidsCan at their checkouts.
Share My Super founder, Liz Greive, shares with KidsCan her first experience of child poverty, why hardship in New Zealand is worse today than 40 years ago, and the role the community has to lift up the next generation
Meridian energy has been our KidsCan Principal Partner for over nine years. We are thrilled to have such an awesome partner who gets behind our work and delivers over and above on their support for KidsCan.
''The attendance team heard from one family that their sons hadn't been attending school because they didn't have any food. And so they then contacted them and told them there was a Breakfast Club at school and we can give them lunch at school too.''
Sky-high food prices are being felt in classrooms, and KidsCan is now feeding 10,000 more hungry students compared to the beginning of the year. As children return to school for Term 4, Kidscan said it had fielded calls from principals who were in tears about the hunger and poverty they were seeing among students.
Verity Brogden is a 20-year old ambassador for KidsCan. ''I want to be a voice for kids in poverty. Not enough of us speak out about living through it, so then we're just thought of as statistics. And it's easier to ignore it, and to pretend it's not happening.''
Some kids weren't at school because their parents had no money for petrol. The stress was immense, and there were a lot of mental health issues. Tough, then, to bring your child up with a lust for life.
We started out in 40 low decile schools, providing raincoats and snacks, packed, and sent from my home. Now we have a warehouse literally packed to the rafters with supplies for more than 850 schools nationwide: breakfast food, snacks, hot lunches, jackets, solid shoes, head lice treatment, hand sanitiser, tissues and more.
