South Auckland Christian Foodbank

Thank you for your support during the latest Covid lockdown. Your support has enabled us to deliver 1,000 foodparcels a week for the last six weeks and helped to meet the demand for families in need during the lockdown. This works out at 300,000 meals we have been able provide families with your support.

We are very proud of the positive difference we are making in our community. This year our organisation celebrated its 15th birthday. We continue to operate our food bank and weekly community dinner for those in genuine need in our community. We ensure that anyone receiving more than one foodparcel also attend a budgeting course. We also operate a community garden in Papatoetoe that provides fresh vegetables for our foodbank. Recently we have established our own budgeting service and run financial literacy courses. This year we celebrate our 14th Annual Christmas Dinner and expect over 450 attendees.

Our Community Dinner that is held every Wednesday night continues to be a success. It numbers on average 85 – 95 people per week, with the majority of guests (families and individuals) from community organisations we are partnered with. The dinner is open to anyone in the community.

We have a Food Save program working with several significant companies to rescue near “end of life”, or best before dated food to supplement food parcels. We now rescue over 4000kg (4 Tonnes) per week.

This year we have also had to increase our supplies of food used to make food parcels that we provide to clients to meet the needs as laid out in our Purpose and Goal. This is due to increased demand for assistance required by budgeting organisations, community groups, churches, social workers, health care providers, Victim Support, Hospice and many other groups.

These groups and organisations are where we get most of our referrals for our services; these now total over 30+ different community groups.

Our organisation also continues to help many other people indirectly by giving out surplus food we collect from various suppliers. We supply other foodbanks and emergency housing providers in our community on a weekly basis.

Our board members continue to bring their experience and diversity to our organisation and we have over 40 volunteers of all ages and ethnic groups who regularly help out in all areas of our operation.

The South Auckland Christian Foodbank is having a positive effect on the people that we get to assist. This is confirmed by the various organisations that continue to endorse our services and is backed up by the progress most of our clients make when engaged with budgeting (a requirement of our foodparcel clients).

Sadly, the need for foodbanks show no signs of going away. Without the money and support we would not be able to operate at our current level in the community, especially in this current environment.