The Waitaha Grandmothers & Grandfathers
The Soup Kitchen
Eighty hot meals. Three days a week. On the main street of Kaikohe, where anyone can walk in and nobody has to explain themselves.
How it began
It started because a grandfather could not watch a child go hungry.
No board meeting. No funding round. No strategic plan. Just an Elder, a pot of soup, and a decision he made on his own.
Our Elder, the late Teporohau Ruka Te Korako, saw what everybody in town could see and most people had learned to walk past. Tamariki coming to school without breakfast. Kuia and koroua stretching a week of groceries into two. Working people going quiet about the fact that the money ran out on Tuesday.
He did not wait for permission. He did not wait for a grant. He put a pot on, called his whanau in, and started handing out soup to whoever needed it.
That is the whole origin story. It is not complicated. It has just never stopped.
Teporohau has since passed. His whanau did not close the doors. They opened them the following week, and the week after that, and they have kept opening them ever since. Three times a week, the pots go on. Three times a week, roughly eighty people eat.
A soup kitchen is easy to start. What is rare is one that outlives the person who started it.
Eighty meals, three services a week, is more than two hundred and forty meals every seven days and over twelve thousand a year. Every one of them is cooked and served by volunteers.
In memory
Teporohau Ruka Te Korako
Our Elder carried the traditions of Waitaha and spoke them into the world, but he measured his own work by something plainer than that. He wanted to know whether the people around him had eaten.
He believed that mana is not what you say about your people. It is what you hand them. A warm bowl, given without a form to fill in and without a single question about why you needed it, is a statement about who somebody is worth.
He built the soup kitchen on that idea and then he handed it to his whanau, not as an asset but as an obligation.
They have kept it.
Three days a week
What actually happens on the main street.
It begins early. Somebody is at the wok before most of the town is awake. Somebody else is counting bowls, checking what came in from the grocers, working out how far today’s donation will stretch.
By the time the roller door goes up, the pots are full. Then the people come. Some are regulars who have eaten here for years. Some are new and stand near the door for a while before they come to the counter. Nobody is asked to prove anything.
There is a koha box on the counter. It sits there quietly. If you can give, you give. If you cannot, you eat anyway. That is the rule and it has never changed.
The pots go on before the town wakes up.
The counter. No forms, no questions, no proof required.
The whanau who keep it open. All volunteers.
Where we are
The food is covered. The building is not.
We want to be straight with you, because the people who support us have earned that.
The kai is not our problem. Local growers, grocers, businesses and families in this district have been extraordinary. Ingredients come through the door week after week from people who ask for nothing back. We are in their debt and we say so every chance we get.
The building is our problem. Power. Gas. Water. Insurance. Commercial cleaning and food safety compliance. A roof that needs attention. Equipment that is one breakdown away from a service we cannot run.
Nobody donates a power bill. Nobody drops off a roof repair. Those costs arrive every month whether or not anyone thought about them, and they are the costs that quietly close kitchens like ours.
We have never been short of hands or short of heart. We are short of the unglamorous money that keeps the doors open.
Accountability
Where your koha goes.
We are a volunteer operation. No salaries come out of what you give. Here is what it actually costs to keep three services a week running.
| What it pays for | Per month |
|---|---|
| Power, gas and water for a commercial kitchen | $0,000 |
| Rent, rates and insurance | $0,000 |
| Food safety compliance, cleaning and consumables | $0,000 |
| Equipment servicing, repair and replacement | $0,000 |
| Building maintenance | $0,000 |
| Total to keep the doors open | $0,000 |
Figures reviewed [EDIT: month and year]. The Waitaha Soup Kitchen is run entirely by volunteers. No koha is used for wages.
How to help
Three ways in, and all three matter.
Give what you actually have. Money is the hardest thing for us to find, but it is not the only thing that keeps this kitchen running.
ONE
Give
A monthly gift, even a small one, is worth more to us than a single large one, because a power bill is monthly too. Regular giving is what lets us plan past next week.
TWO
Supply
Growers, grocers, butchers, bakers and wholesalers: bulk ingredients, packaging and cleaning supplies go straight into the next service. So does commercial kitchen equipment you are replacing.
THREE
Serve
Prep, cooking, serving, dishes, deliveries. If you can give a morning, we will find you something to do. Bring a friend and give us two.
Tautoko
Keep the doors open.
Our Elder started this with a pot of soup and a decision. Every gift is somebody else making the same decision he did.
Donations are processed securely by PayPal. You do not need a PayPal account to give by card. Gifts are received by the Sacred Church of Waitaha, run under the auspices of the Grandfather Council.
Come in
You are welcome at the counter.
Whether you are hungry, whether you want to help, or whether you just want to see what our Elder built, the door is open on service days.
Where
[EDIT: street address]
Main Street, Kaikohe
Northland, Aotearoa New Zealand
When
[EDIT: days]
[EDIT: serving times]
Contact
[EDIT: email]
[EDIT: phone]
Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi.
With your basket and my basket, the people will thrive.