Is it time for more Community Survival Programmes?

Only we can help each other because this government won't....

The horror of pay equity being destroyed in Aotearoa has rightly been a big part of the news cycle. What has fallen off the headlines is the horror of children in our country going hungry thanks to this government. It sucks to think about it, but we have to remember that David Seymour’s relentless campaign to end the school lunch programme by ensuring its failure is continuing.

To recap, there have been more complaints about David Seymour’s school lunches in one term than in the last four years of the programme. When I published a story about a food safety complaint made about flies in a school lunch, Seymour set his rabid, racist and deranged following on me. He claimed he’d been exonerated because the complaint had been dropped. The reality is that the school was too afraid to go further with it. Which - why would they? Given how Seymour and his freaks have gone after school staff?

Today, we learned there was a maggot for lunch. Oh sorry, the spin is that it’s a worm or a caterpillar which we are meant to believe is somehow better. This is no different to how they claimed the flies were dead therefore there wasn’t an issue

This news follows countless reports of lunches so hot they burnt a student leading to them being hospitalised, so inedible they were fed to the school pig, and food frozen and unable to be eaten. Students at another school were left with steam burns from lunches, other schools have not had lunches delivered or delivered too late, and nearly a third of schools receiving lunches have contacted the Ministry of Education with queries and complaints. There have also been issues with lunches for Muslim students, with one school reporting only one certified halal meal arrived for 50 halal students. This followed The School Lunches Collective admitting meals were not certified as halal.

The teachers union NZEI surveyed more than 200 principals and teachers and found 80 percent were ‘not satisified’ with meals provided by the School Lunch Collective.

As we know - THEIR AIM IS TO SCRAP THE SCHOOL LUNCHES. The point is to make them so bad that no schools will give them to kids and Seymour can say they’re not needed. The programme is a shambles and it is only funded until the end of 2026. David Seymour has said: “Any decision taken on whether or not to keep the programme beyond [2026] would be subject to Budget process.”

So - what do we do? Well we can’t vote these human-shaped pieces of garbage out until next year so what can we do now? What should we do?

I reckon we need to help each other because the government won’t.

During the AIDS crisis of the 80s and ’90s, queer communities took matters into their own hands and created their own health clinics, therapy groups, needle exchange programs, and food pantries. The solidarity built with allies and community members who were criminalised and ignored by the government helped build a movement for change that grew for decades and achieved real wins. - Mary Zerkel

This is mutual aid. It’s about solidarity, not charity. We actually have examples of school lunch programmes that were built through mutual aid. In 1969, The People’s Free Food Program, was a Black Panther Party founded and run community service programme that gave free breakfasts to school children. The Free Breakfast for Children Programme was one among more than 60 community social programs created by the Black Panther Party in response to rampant racism and injustice in the United States. These programmes were called Community Survival Programs.

My local pantry before…

Let’s talk about supporting a Community Survival Programme through mutual aid!

Mutual aid builds solidarity, helping everyone involved by creating new communities of care with our neighbors to redistribute wealth and share skills and material resources with those who need help - Mary Zerkel.

Step one: Start a group chat on the horrorscape social media platform of your choice. Invite any friends who are gainfully employed in jobs that earn a decent wage. Do not invite friends who are between jobs, have just been made redundant or earn a living wage or less. Important: Don’t pressure people. You never know what’s going on for someone behind closed doors.

Step two: Share a variation of this message with them: “It feels like there is a heap of need in our community. I’m in a position to share a few dollars and I’d like to organise a fortnightly or monthly purchase for our local Pataka Kai (food bank). Are you keen?” Important: As above, no pressure. The point of a mutual aid fund is to share if you can and when you can.

Step three: Work out roles. In my group of four friends, we each give a koha fortnightly ranging from $2 to $20. How much someone gives doesn’t matter (see above). But you do need to work out roles - someone needs to share a bank account, someone needs to buy the kai and share it with your local Pataka Kai. Important: You can swap these roles around or one person can do multiple roles. In my group I love to be distracted from working and I work from home so I do the shopping and stock the Pataka Kai. That means I collect the money too.

Super important: Set up a completely separate account for your mutual aid fund. It ensures you keep track of what is given. It will also protect you if you have a benefit or student allowance and keep you safe from IRD. Never take out cash - if you take out cash you can’t prove it was koha used for community purposes. Keep receipts and share them in the group chat. I buy from The Warehouse because the deals are good there and I have all of the receipts stored in The Warehouse app as well as sharing them with my friends.

And after - Except for the bread and slimming tablets (wtf)- this is $30 of kai bought with koha from four of us.

Step four: Find your local Pataka Kai or food bank. Follow Pataka Kai on Facebook to see where new Pataka Kai food pantries are being set up. If you want to be real cool you can set up a Pataka Kai if your community doesn’t have one. I live in an extremely bougie community that generally is filled with rich people who don’t care about anyone - but we just got a Pataka Kai installed! If your community doesn’t have one you can also contact your local school to see if they have one. Generally you can search your suburb and Pataka Kai or you can check out this awful map.

Step five: Buy your kai but follow the food rules. They are simple - make sure that food you drop off is in a condition that you would eat it yourself. Don't drop off any hot or pre-cooked meals. Fresh fruit and vegetables must be mould free. Tinned and dried goods must be unopened. Breads, Sandwiches, biscuits, eggs and baked goods can only be accepted if they’re less than two days old and labelled with the date and time it was made.

Always useful: Long Life Milk, toiletry items, baby formula and packaged foods.
Obviously don’t give half-eaten food. Don’t give raw fish, meat, and bottled milk.
Don’t give food that is past its expiry (don’t ride my ass about this - we shop at reduced to clear but that’s our choice don’t make that choice for someone else) and don’t give food that has been recalled by the manufacturer. Don’t give cooked food - if you want to share meals you can set up a community meal train or share in a community group that you have an extra meal available.

Pro tip: I always buy from The Warehouse simply because they have bulk deals like five bags of pasta for $5 or cans of fruit salad for $5. I mostly buy cup-of-soups, noodles, fruit in cans, and pasta because these were what were picked most at the Mission Social Supermarket.

And that’s it! You helped your community and you did what David Seymour and this government is incapable of doing - you gave someone support without expectation.

I know life seems very bad right now because it is very bad right now. But it does give me hope knowing there is a big group of us trying to make life less bad. When I fill up an empty food pantry it does make me realise four people can make a difference. Four people can provide 15 families with dinner every fortnight by sharing what they can, when they can. There are thousands of us here. Imagine what we can do together?

Forgive me I struggled this whole time with programme/program. Where it felt necessary to keep American spelling I did.