Motueka's service providers combine efforts to tackle hardship

September 8th, 2011
[by David Armstrong]

Food banks and related services are meeting in an attempt to rationalise their operations, in the face of the continuing growth of economic hardship and unemployment in the Motueka community.

Ezekial Mafusire, Motueka Ministry Leader for the Salvation Army, told the 16 people attending yesterday's Community & Whanau meeting that preparatory discussions are under way between the food banks, church groups and organisations like the Family Service Centre to work better and more effectively together.

"There is no doubt that there is a significant rise in families needing food assistance in Motueka and that there are pockets of agencies providing food assistance in one way or the other," Ezekial told Motueka Online.

"There is however a danger of ineffective use of resources, duplication and double dipping and lack of knowledge on how others are responding to the same need. We have already seen that there is a lot of agencies providing food assistance, clothing, petrol vouchers etc in isolation while serving the same families in the same community."

He said a regular forum of these providers is therefore needed to help achieve:

A coordinated and strategic way of using of resources.
Collaboration through information sharing and support and lessons learnt.
Increased public awareness of hunger issues in our community.
Strengthening the existing local responses.

The first formal meeting will be held on October 4th at 10am at The Church of Christ in Motueka.

Also the Community & Whanau meeting learned that the Strengthening Families service has taken off, with six families currently registered during the past month after a very slow start last year. With such take-up the Family Service Centre is now working hard to recruit two more service facillitators.

Another attender of these menthly meetings, Gabrielle Thorp who has been general manager at ATET, announced that she will come to the September Community & Whanau meeting as manager of Get Safe Motueka. The group expressed their pleasure at the news and wished Gabrielle well in her new job.

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