For the past two and half years, four members of Tahunanui Presbyterian Church in Nelson have been helping local school children make healthy lunches.
The church wanted to engage in more community outreach, so approached Tahunanui School with an offer of breakfasts.
Elder Helen King says the news at the time was “full of stories of children going to school hungry”.
The school, while grateful for the offer, did not have children arriving hungry. After discussing together what the children did need, the school and church came up with the “Sandwich Club”, where the church would provide healthy food and teach pupils how to make healthy lunches. The school appointed a teacher responsible for organising the children who wanted to take part.
The club has been running since early 2008 and is so popular that children have to apply to take part. Four different groups of eight children attend the club four times per month. Each session lasts 40 minutes and starts with putting on name tags, washing hands, and finding out about the week’s sandwich ingredients. Then the children and the four helpers each make their own sandwich and prepare some fruit.
The meal is shared sitting on the floor together, having a conversation. At the end of the meal, the children help wash the dishes and sweep the floor.
Tahunanui Church pays for all the food, which the four church members take turns sourcing. Helen says the children get to eat things that they might never have seen before. “Some can be resistant to trying new things; we had dates and we got ‘what’s that’?’ We had the same response from a few to celery and to sweet turnip. Some of the children haven’t had spreads or salad dressing.”
Club staples include wholegrain and wholemeal bread and buns, boiled eggs, canned fish, shaved ham, cottage cheese, sliced cheese, lettuce, grated and sliced carrots, beetroot, tomatoes and nuts. Fruit is usually kiwifruit, apples or pears.
“You get the sense that for some of the children sharing a meal with others is a new experience. We talk together as we eat; the children tell us what they get up to on the weekends, they talk about their brothers and sisters and sometimes we know them if they attended the club a couple of years back. There are those who are a bit shy about sharing with an older person but we get over that.”
Bringing to the club their experience as grandparents is something that the church helpers enjoy, Helen says. “I am aware there are a lot of single-parent families in our area, and I wonder how many have grandparents. I’m in my late 70s, as is one of our male helpers: we may be the only older people that the Sandwich Club children have contact with. You do wonder if you have an impact, especially if a child tells you they don’t have any grandparents and that they enjoy talking with you.
“I was recently told that one boy who is having counseling was asked by his counsellor who he trusts and his reply was that he trusts the four of us running the Sandwich Club. And I remember another boy coming to Sandwich Club and sharing about his grandma who had just died and at the next week he told us about the funeral. They are great children and we appreciate them.”
Helen says that Tahunanui Presbyterian hopes to engage more with the Tahunanui School. At the end of last year the church’s Association of Presbyterian Women group invited the school’s choir to perform at the church, and parents were also invited to attend. “We had the pleasure of 80 children singing to us. Many of the children were wide-eyed as they had never been inside a church before”.
By Angela Singer