Food Support
Sometimes life will throw us a curve ball, or several, and we need a little extra help to make it work. At Who Cares House we have a range of food support options to give you a hand, so when life gives you lemons you can make lemonade.
Food Bank
Our food bank is stocked with all the essentials you need, including personal care items, household cleaning products and even pet food so your furry friend isn’t left wanting. Our food boxes are made up depending on your personal circumstances, so they always suit your needs.
Heat & Eat Meals
Our freezer is stocked with homemade heat and eat meals, already stored in microwave safe containers. So that if you are unable to cook for the short term we have you covered.
Accessing the Food Bank
Getting help through our food support programs is easy, just phone our Food Bank cell on 027 732 8631 to make an appointment. We don’t need to know all your business, we are not here to judge just to help you through a tough time.
The only requirement we have is that you live in our service area, which is the Reefton Region, including Inangahua, Maruia, Ikamatua and in between. We may ask you a few questions to help us gauge what you need and for how long, this isn’t to pry, it’s simply so we can do our best to help you out in the way you need. In extreme circumstances, like sustained and ongoing support, we may ask you to engage with budget services so we can ensure what we are doing is helping. This isn’t a judgement, it is simply another useful tool we utilise to make sure you get the right support.
If you want to know more about the Food Bank, check out our FAQ’s below
How You Can Help
Our food bank isn’t magical, it needs constant restocking and to do that we need donations. This can include financial donations as well as food and household items, currently we especially need meat for the freezer. We know you are all generous but please ensure any food donations are not expired or partially used.
Maybe you have some time on your hands and want to help out. We are always looking for volunteers who are willing to make our heat and eat meals for the freezer.
If you want to make a food donation or become a volunteer cook please phone Lisa Neil on 027 732 8631. To make a financial donation visit the Making a Donation page under Contact Us, or click here.
Frequently Asked Qestions
Yes, we don’t charge anything for the Food Bank. But when do encourage people to ‘give back’ when they are able to. This might mean they give a monetary donation when things are more stable, or they give a donation of their time by volunteering in some way.
Sadly yes, there really is. On average Who Cares House does 20 food parcels a week. That isn’t just for individuals, some are for families, so this can mean we are supporting up wards of 100 people a week at times. That is a significant portion of the population.
We hope you are ready, its a daunting number. Currently it is taking $2500 a month to stock the Food Bank. And sadly with the rate of inflation, the standard winter costs and increased numbers using the Food Bank, we anticipate with number soaring to over $3000 even up to $3500 soon.
Unfortunately there is no more funding we can access to help keep our Food Bank going. We received a one off grant to set up the Food Bank but that was it. Funding for food related costs for non-profits is very limited and difficult to get. Kai Puku, a food collective, does help out when they can by giving us deliveries of what they have on hand. But even they are struggling to get stock.
We are now relying largely on the generosity of the public, donations are what will keep this going. Be that donations of food or financial contributions, we need the help of the public to keep supporting the community.
As a standard addition to a food parcel, no we don’t add in baking ingredients, although people can ask for them and if we have them we can add them.
The reasons we don’t add them as standard are rather simple, firstly its the cost. We simply cannot afford it, costs have risen so much its just not cost effective anymore. Secondly, not everyone knows how to bake or has the time and we don’t want to kick someone when they are down by giving them items they can’t make use of.
Click here to get a list of what we need. Whilst we don’t turn down donations of items that aren’t on the list, we do encourage people to think about what they are donating, remember no everyone has the same cooking skills or even the same facilities.
For health and safety reasons we don’t accept opened or partially used food, same goes for expired food or food past its best before. We need to be super careful about food safety, we don’t want someone getting sick. Yes there are some exceptions, like dry items that might only be a week or two past their best before. But for items like tinned goods, where there is a risk of botulism or other nasties, we don’t make exceptions.
Whilst we do repackage our own food sometimes, food like sugar, tea bags, milk power and cereal. This is done carefully using clean hands and tools, as well as new and unused bags. We also only repackage new food that hasn’t been opened before and it is only being opened for the purpose of repacking it into smaller quantities.
