Taking off the rose tinted glasses

Sorry about the incredible lack of posts. This programme has been full on so I haven't had a lot of time to process thoughts which is needed write a coherent blog entry. Hopefully I will fill in the gaps sometime between my last blog entry and this one as a lot has happened during this time, including leaving India!

Sorry about the quality. Early morning dancing with some of the children at Breakfast Club.

Child poverty in New Zealand has been a massive talking point over the past year, frequently being highlighted and debated in the media and, just recently, its permanence was admonished by Amnesty International in its human rights report of New Zealand. According to another recent report, this one carried out by the national government, approximately 270,000 children in New Zealand live in poverty, potentially having harmful short-term and long-term impacts on these young people and seriously decreasing their opportunity set.

Throughout my life I have been given a very positive perspective on New Zealand - the land of milk and honey. Part of this perspective claims that everyone in this country has an equal opportunity to lead healthy, dignified and meaningful lives. Over the past few weeks, however, I have been able to tear off these rose tinted glasses, allowing me to see some of what life in this country is really like for some of New Zealand’s most vulnerable, that is, children.

For the past three weeks, Rosanna, Deepak, Taiti and I have been visiting a breakfast club at a primary school in south Auckland which is aimed addressing some of the problems associated with child poverty. According to the coordinator of this breakfast club, not having breakfast can seriously and negatively affect a child’s concentration, brain development, capacity to engage in learning, as well as their behaviour. This particular breakfast club provides breakfast for children who will otherwise go without and a safe environment for children whose parents, for a number of reasons, are not able to look after them before school starts, expanding the opportunity set for many of these children.

For the majority of our time at the club we play games, talk, and eat toast and breakfast cereal with the children. This so called “work” has been hugely enjoyable (I do not actually mind getting up at 6am!) and enriching.  I have thoroughly enjoyed interacting with some of the children and getting to know them. Furthermore, in seeing how initiatives like breakfast club work and operate as well as some of the positive effects that they have on children it has been unquestionably enriching. Through listening to some of their stories, however, it has also been quite shocking and eye opening. For instance, one nine year old girl told me that her mother is twenty four years of age, just a year older than me! This made the issue of child poverty really strike an emotional chord with me; she could be my daughter.

At the same time, I acknowledge that I do not see all of the effects of having breakfast clubs in schools. I am not able to see how the food does affect them at school, how the family is affected, how society is affected and how the children as a whole are affected. In other words, I only see through a small window into its outcomes.

Moreover, it is important not to overemphasise the strengths of breakfast clubs. Currently the government, in partnership with a couple of businesses, are also involved in promoting breakfast clubs, providing a simple breakfast cereal and milk to schools in low socio-economic areas. In my opinion this is not enough; it is merely a band-aid on the wound that is child poverty. A breakfast club does not exactly challenge the oppressive system which keeps children living in poverty; it merely provides a very brief respite from the burdens of living in poverty. They do not stop the underlying reasons why children are going hungry at school and in some ways they distract society from demanding that these underlying causes are addressed. I believe that the government needs to address the wider poverty issues so that organisations such as this particular breakfast club are no longer required to exist.

Next week we are meeting with an expert on child poverty in New Zealand. I am looking forward to posing some questions about long-term solutions to child poverty in New Zealand and what he believes the government’s and civil society’s response should be to it so that I can have a greater understanding of my country.