Thursday January 24

The Auckland City Mission gears up for start of the school year

As families get ready for the return to school the Auckland City Mission is once again preparing to support the city’s most vulnerable families.

New figures released today shows the mission faced the greatest ever demand for its emergency food parcels last year. It distributed more than 21 thousand food parcels in 2018 – that is a 55 per cent increase on 2017. (Jan-Dec 2017 – 13,846 parcels distributed, Jan – Dec 2018 - 21,404 parcels distributed) These figures, Mission Social Services General Manager Helen Robinson says, show a dramatic increase in the demand for food – pointing to the reality of a hunger crisis now present in our country.

She says Christmas is the busiest time for the mission and one of the most stressful periods for its clients. That’s reflected in today’s figures. The Mission distributed 8,242 food parcels in December – providing more than 300 thousand individual meals in that time. That also represented a big jump in demand. In December 2017 the Mission gave out 4,680 food parcels.

Ms Robinson says Aucklanders once again showed their generosity and support – with the Christmas appeal raising $1,641,701.03 – that not only helped bring some joy to families in need over the festive season – but will help the Mission support families as they prepare to send their children back to school.

“Christmas is a real time of need for many people. We know too, this time of year is a difficult one for families as children return to school. For families on inadequate incomes this means often, there is not enough money left over for food. We are very grateful for the support of the Auckland community to our appeal, and want to say thank you – your support means we can respond to the very real and desperate needs of thousands of Aucklanders, something we see each day at the Mission.”

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