#FillTheirLunchbox – Help Alleviate NZ Child Poverty

“Fill Their Lunchbox” has a vision…. We plan to change the tomorrow of New Zealand, but we need your help!

Our Country’s Dilemma:

It hurts us greatly to see the future of New Zealand is struggling to get the basic necessities of life. What may seem an assumed basic right to many of us, is a fight for so many.

• 305,000 kiwi kids live in poverty (thats a huge 29% of NZ children),
• 148,000 kiwi kids go without food, warmth and clothing,
• 60% of these children live in poverty for many many years,
• 9% live in extreme poverty.

Something needs to be done. We endeavour to do our bit to alleviate the effects this has on the life of our children. Something as simple as providing a lunch to a hungry child can change their life for the better.

What We Do:

Over the past year we have supplied 8,000 lunches to impoverished kiwi kids from three Christchurch schools (Linwood Avenue, Aranui Primary, and Te Waka Unua – a product of the Woolston Primary and Phillipstown Primary merger.) It has been a humbling and a rewarding experience, but we have been limited by funding, and not having our own dedicated kitchen. But, we know with the help of the community, we can do so much more.

Our Plan Moving Forward:

“Fill Their Lunchbox” is moving FULL-TIME with getting our own custom built kitchen that can operate 24/7 and involving you with the “buy one, gift one” model. That is, for every lunch you order, not only do we deliver it to you but we donate a lunch to a kiwi kid in need too. Lunches will be available to order from our website (under construction) the day prior to delivery, and our menu will change every day.

Our lunches for the children will have a health conscious focus, with co-operation from local nutritionists we will be supplying a suitable selection of food to cater to a growing child’s needs, whilst tackling New Zealand’s child obesity problem.

Our operator, Ben “Diggy” Atkinson is an experienced chef with the passion and creative flair to deliver healthy and delicious fresh food to both our customers and our children.

Our goal is huge, but so are our hearts. We are aiming to break the cycle and impact of child poverty and with your generous pledges we can build our kitchen and have the capacity to provide lunches to over  2,000 hungry kids every week.

Funding:

To be completely honest $30,000 is a low ball figure and we will require more personal investment and funding strategies. However, we hope that by doing this together we can raise $80,000 to get this rolling. This covers the cost of our kitchen being built, the commercial kitchen equipment, all installations to be fitted correctly and inspected by the council, working capital to keep us on our feet for the first few weeks, initial stock (food and packaging), rent, utilities, vehicle purchase and maintanance, and paying our small group of staff. To ease this burden we are hoping to have the community help us in donating some of the kitchen equipment needed and can be contacted at the link below.

The Future:

This initiative will take place in Christchurch, a place that has gifted me a beautiful 12 years of memories and experience. However, it is incredibly important to me to also get this initative operational in my home town of Nelson as well. I feel it as a duty and a need to pay homage to my roots, raising over $120,000 would make this a possibility within six months.

Thank you for your time and we hope you share our passion, every dollar counts and we are in this for the long haul, so find a reward, and pledge your hearts away. Lastly, if you are a business that has a suggestion for a reward you could offer we would love to hear from you, and can be reached via our facebook page 

This is your chance to make a positive change in our own community. One you can see and one you can be involved in.

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.” – Mahatma Gandhi