Kai with kindness stands out in NZ ‘Food Heroes’ winners

Winners in seven categories of the unique New Zealand Food Heroes 2020 awards – a campaign that sprouted from the annual New Zealand Food Awards to capture the impact of COVID-19 – were announced last night from 48 finalists selected from over 340 nominations. 

They represent Aotearoa’s unsung food heroes – including a tourism company, industry bodies, community groups, small-town supermarket workers and cafés. 

Transforming tonnes of surplus food from supermarkets – including 26,000 eggs – into fresh food parcels for thousands of people in need during lockdown saw West Auckland-based Fair Food Charitable Trust named the country’s ultimate “food hero”, winning the Massey University Supreme Winner NZ Food Heroes Award.

Veronica Shale, Executive Director at Fair Food Charitable Trust, says the award is an acknowledgement of a huge community effort to help people in need. “When COVID hit, our community groups and businesses stepped in to volunteer their trucks, forklifts, their hearts, heads, minds and mana, which was a phenomenal response and helped us to respond at the scale we did.”

The most rewarding aspect of the trust’s work, for her, was realising; “we are all connected, whether as a community, a country, a supply chain. Every step in that chain is important, whether you’re a grower, or a producer or a manufacturer or a food rescuer – we’ve all got a role to play in just loving and respecting our food.”

The toughest part was “turning up to food banks during the second or third week of lockdown to extraordinarily long lines of cars – cars you never expect to see in a food bank.”

Veronica reckons Kiwis’ sense of community is what sets us apart as a nation – and she’s chuffed that Kiwis “stepped up at that time to help feed people and not dump really good food in landfill, and that’s what we’re about – feeding people and looking after the planet.”

Also winners of the Greater Good NZ Food Heroes Award, Fair Food Charitable Trust was chosen as the Supreme Winner for “the way it demonstrated excellent team work and leadership in order to significantly upscale a food rescue and distribution service to provide food for over 20,000 people in need a week.” 

In 2019 they rescued 121 tons of food (equal to 348,000 meals) – then due to COVID-19, they radically scaled up their response rescuing on average 143 tonnes (over 400,000 meals) per month in 2020. 

Founded in 2011, Fair Food was operating as a mobile food rescue operation in West Auckland. To meet increased demand they set up distribution bases in Oratia, Avondale, Henderson and Avondale. The organisation was nominated for upscaling efforts during the pandemic and building on a legacy of rescuing surplus fit-to-eat food for people in need, addressing social and environmental issues – such as food waste – that were among our most urgent even before COVID-19 struck. 

Members of the Auckland Sikh community, who won the People’s Choice award.

Sikh community in the spotlight

Winners of the People’s Choice NZ Food Heroes Award, the Supreme Sikh Society, started a food bank at the Sikh Temple in Takanini, aiming to distribute 1100 food parcels to people struggling during the lockdown. They were able to feed around 66,000 families impacted by the lockdown from Auckland right down to Queenstown with their simple motive to “recognise the whole human race as one.”

Their nation-wide food distribution project started the day after lockdown. Daljit Singh says Sikh philosophy states that the basic principle of Sikhism is to share with others, and food was the important part of that during COVID-19 – “so that nobody goes to sleep without food.”

Each parcel contained enough food for four people to last four to five days, with volunteers working from their Takanini base, as well as from other sites around Auckland and throughout New Zealand.

Mr Singh says recipients of food parcels were often in tears, telling volunteers: “We never knew who the Sikh people were before. But now, everybody knows who the Sikh people are.”

Local Hero NZ Food Heroes Award Winner Diana Greer developed the “Collective Hug” group to help support the rural community in her Hawke’s Bay region through food parcel distribution

She says winning the award is; “Outstanding, amazing – but it’s not just for me, it’s for all my team.”

A highlight for her was “the look on farmers’ faces when they got their food parcels – there was a lot of tears shed.”

Professor Ray Geor, Pro Vice-Chancellor College of Sciences and New Zealand Food Awards governance board chair, says Fair Food Charitable Trust embodies the Kiwi spirit that the New Zealand Food Awards and the NZ Food Heroes campaign stand for. 

“They combined sustainability, business innovation, excellent team work and leadership – all while caring for the vulnerable in a time of need. Taking a purely mobile model that delivered 121 tonnes of food in 2019 to a distribution model with four sites to deliver 143 tonnes of food per month during lockdown is nothing short of exceptional.”