Welcome back to our series about the cost-of-living crisis that is affecting SO MANY of us right now. Seven out of 10 New Zealanders regularly worry about money, and odds are that you’re one of them.
We’ll be looking at such topics as how the cost-of-living crisis is impacting our physical and mental health, how couples with different spending habits are handling their money, and the trend of ‘loud budgeting’.
If there’s something you’d like covered, or you’re keen to be interviewed, please email us at hello@capsulenz.com!
This week, we talk to one of the women working at the coal face of the cost-of-living crisis. At Kindness Collective, referrals are up 52% from last year, and for food requests, up 78%. But for the first time, Kindness Collective Founder and Chief Executive Sarah Page says they’re also now organising food parcels for people with mortgages, as well as in public housing. She talks to Capsule about how people who were doing fine in 2023 are now struggling in 2024 as the cost-of-living crisis bites harder.
Sarah Page, chief executive and founder of the not-for-profit organisation Kindness Collective, has a simple way for you to help improve the lives of New Zealanders who are currently slipping through the cracks: donate your tax cut.
“If you’re in a position where a $15-20 tax cut actually doesn’t make too much of a difference to you, then consider donating it,” she says. “It can be to any charity to people who is supporting people with the basic necessities – it can be your local City Mission, it can be us, it can be someone else. But that $15-$20 can mean that a family eats this week.”
The situation in our country right now, Sarah says, is worse than you can imagine. As the cost-of-living crisis bites harder, there is an entirely new level of our society who are now also struggling after a very hard few years. The numbers that Kindness Collective are seeing paint a grim picture; for their everyday essentials tier, the referrals are up 52% from last year; and for general food requests, the number has increased 78%.
“It’s incredibly worrying for many charities just how much their referrals have increased for people who, last year, were doing okay,” she says. “They had a bit of money; they were able to pay a mortgage. Now, Dad is having to get a second job in the weekends, because they can’t afford food anymore.”
As a community driven organisation, Kindness Collective is used to being the point of contact for community leaders who come in sourcing help for people in need. Now those leaders are also in trouble. “We’ve got social workers who support families living in the most dire of situations, coming in and going, ‘God, I could also do with a food box.’”
There are early childhood education teachers who are supporting families who now, themselves, are struggling to pay the rent. It’s the middle-income earners who are feeling the squeeze; as Sarah puts it, Kindness Collective are now putting together food boxes for people who are mortgage payers, as well as people in government housing. The wheels are falling off, fast.
“It is genuinely concerning how charities are being left to pick up the pieces for this system that is clearly not working,” Sarah says. As well as an increase in your average Kiwi coming to charities like Kindness Collective for help, there has also been an increase in referrals being received by government agencies. “People can’t afford to live anymore, and no-one’s doing anything about it.” Sarah says. “It’s really bad. It’s really, really bad.”
One of those new referrals was to provide food for people living in government housing, another was a request from a district council to help families living in caravans. The need is increasing dramatically, as the safeguards are disappearing. On the day we speak, Sarah mentions three Auckland food banks who are either having to shut their doors or drastically reduce who they cater to. And last week, Auckland’s City Mission announced that funding cuts means they’re going to have to cut 27,000 meals a week for families in need.
“Who is going to feed people?” she says. “We got so many emails in one week, from all these places saying ‘help, help, help.’ So, we just keep saying yes, until we can no longer say yes. Until we’re at the point where we can’t open the doors today.”
This is, of course, under a government who has promised to be tough on crime while also slowly pulling out the rug of what makes a society function. Take the eleventh hour decision to continue with the healthy school lunches programme – threatened by ACT during the election, then ultimately saved… but with the famous cost-cutting rhetoric layered onto it. Even that existing scheme is not without its issues, Sarah says.
“We’ve heard from so many schools that have nothing to serve the breakfast in,” Sarah says of the Kickstart Breakfast scheme. “All the teachers are bringing TipTop containers in from home, or they’re told to get the community to supply bowls, but if you’re heading to a second-hand shop to buy bowls, that’s still $50 out of your own pocket. There are all these barriers that people don’t quite realise. And for a lot of kids as well, there is so much shame. There is so much shame for being the kid that goes to breakfast club.”
Sarah cites an example of one child they were asked to help. It was a teenager, living apart from their family, in a household where they weren’t being fed more than one meal a day. Very quickly, they started to fall through the cracks – their grades dropped, their friendships fell apart; once a promising sports player, they had to pull out as they were simply too hungry to compete.
A school nurse, who was seeing this downward spiral start, contacted Kindness Collective and asked for help – could they supply this teenager with breakfast, lunch and dinner, all to be eaten on school grounds, so they wouldn’t be punished by their adopted family for receiving help.
It was an out of the ordinary request, Sarah says, but they pushed to make it work. Well, it’s been seven months since they started secretly supplying the teenager with food. “They’re back playing sports, they’re hanging out with better kids, they’re going back to class,” Sarah says. “The nurse said that they’re really starting to come into their own. And that’s one teenager. That’s what happens when you feed children.”
As a charity, Kindness Collective are reliant on donations from individuals and companies to keep the lights on and hungry mouths fed. Both of those have dropped off as the cost-of-living crisis increases, which is why Sarah is asking people to consider donating their tax cuts, if the additional money isn’t going to make a difference to everyday life.
“If people can donate their tax cuts, if they can collect pyjamas, if they can donate a blanket to the City Mission… whatever it is, if you’re not going to miss it, consider giving it,” she says. “And if you’re one of those people where a $20 tax cut a week is going to really help, then maybe it’s just donating a can out of your cupboard.”
Getting friends and colleagues to join you in donating a can is an easy, achievable way to make a difference. “If every month, you can take a few bags of cans down to your local food bank, then that’s a family that can eat for a week.”
Part of the problem, Sarah says, is that the problem feels so overwhelming, in a sea of other problems that also feel overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be. “If people knew how easy it was to help, I think they would do it more,” she says. “Think about $5 – if we had 1000 people donating $5 a month, what a difference it would make.”
Kindness Collective have just announced their new initiative, Manaaki Ora, to help look after Kiwis doing it tough this winter. They’ve partnered with Nau Mai Rā, The Warehouse, Tend Health and Bargain Box by My Food Bag to launch a first-of-its-kind programme to help whānau stay warm, and well over winter.
Their annual winter campaign, The PJ Project has already delivered warmth to over 14,000 children. This year they’re going one step further to launch Manaaki Ora – Winter Wellness, which will provide energy support, healthcare, food and winter warmth essentials for a group of whānau in South Auckland.
