The Kai Collective Project

The Kai Collective Project have provided local Maungakiekie-Tāmaki groups and community leaders with food since March 2020. Our members have distributed it directly to people and whānau in their community, working predominantly with Māori and Pasifika. Over the 107 days in lockdown, we distributed up to 750 x parcels a week, through over 22 x community groups and leaders. Our collective model and volunteers enabled this success and we are proud of and thankful for all that we have achieved for our communities.

However through this time, we have realised how much being a part of the food system has prevented us from having the ability to change that food system. So we are going to be brave and step into a different direction, and create the space we need.

In reflection, we have spent a lot of volunteer hours and money over the last 20 weeks, that we could utilise differently for the next 20 weeks.

* On average, for every hour we were able to pay a worker, we had a volunteer contributing an hour in different ways - from on the ground support, delivering, food supply management, project management, composting and truck driving. There were many weeks where our volunteer hours exceeded our worker hours that we had available, and this does not even include the hours that each community group/ leader contributes after they receive the food. We contributed as many koha vouchers as we could to our collective.

In our old system, we were paying approx. 15 mins for every parcel, and relying on volunteers to pick up the remaining workload. The volume that we were working at, puts us amongst some of the largest emergency food support providers in Tāmaki Makaurau, except we were working at a significantly reduced workforce and infrastructure, in comparison. The Kai Collective Project was never set up to provide emergency food support in a pandemic. What we are here to do, is to create food security and sovereignty for all, through innovation and testing out new ideas.

We remain committed to supporting the challenges our communities face during a pandemic. This will be done alongside our broader work in The Aotearoa Kai Journey. All local leaders and groups in The Kai Collective will continue to remain committed to walking alongside our whānau in Maungakiekie-Tāmaki, however it will be at a lower capacity unless we secure additional funding to upscale.

Our Next Steps

In our new system, with the current funds that we have, we will be distributing $10,000 of food per week in 100 x parcels (raising our per parcel amount to $100). We will be working alongside a food supplier that will also distribute directly to the whānau, effectively reducing all of our volunteers, workers and infrastructure needs. We are able to scale this up to increase the number of parcels, if we receive additional funding.

This will enable us to focus our time and efforts on finding solutions to the food systems, not being so heavily involved within it. We have funding and support from Foundation North, Ministry of Social Development and the Department of Internal Affairs that’s been waiting for us to start new innovations since mid-2021 and we are very excited to get into it!

If you are interested in what these next steps will be, please check out our website - https://aotearoakaijourney.com/ and contact Philippa - philippa@thegoodfale.com.

To contact us about The Kai Collective changes, get in touch through our email for more information - kaicollective@rakautautoko.com.