Cleaners turned lunch-time heroes

Two cleaners at Peachgrove intermediate noticed children were coming to school hungry, and decided it was up to them to make a difference.

They started up a breakfast club at the school two years ago, which provides cereal, milk, and toast for students, and a lunch club, which provides sandwiches.

“My two cleaning staff are the ones who initiated the breakfast club, and they started that club without asking me for extra pay or extra money to do it,” principal Louise Barham said.

“They just gave up their time to get it off the ground which was incredible. It says a lot about people.”

Yvone Taylor and Shireen West help feed an estimated 10% of the schools 450 students who are from struggling families.

“Children were coming to school hungry, I mean they had nothing to eat,” said Taylor.

Taylor and West got the clubs started and then assistant principal Wayne Bromell got in touch with Kickstart, which helped provide cereal, milk and toast.

Direct Group, which makes school uniforms,  also pitched in to help feed the Peachgrove students.

“We’ve been lucky two years in a row. Direct Group donated cereal, spreads, spaghetti, baked beans,” said Taylor.

Principal Barham has been at Peachgrove for 13 years, and saw that families were struggling to provide meals.

“We’re having quite a few children who we’re having to feed, and five years ago I wasn’t having to do that,” said Barham.

When breakfast club was first started, she found students were reluctant to go because of the stigma.

They shifted to a more private classroom at the back of the school and numbers soon began to rise.

“It’s virtually like being at home, and nobody can see who’s coming and going,” said Taylor.

 “At lunch time we have two lots of people coming in, donating time and sandwiches. By lunchtime most of the time all the food’s gone,” said Taylor.

Executive officer Julie Baker has also stepped in, going to pick up bread and jam so the students could make toast when the sandwiches ran out.

Sandwiches are donated by St Vincent de Paul, and the Tribal Huk gang have also donated sandwiches in the past.

 Taylor and West discovered  some of the children were eating their lunch at morning tea, and then coming to lunch club as they were hungry again.

This highlighted the problem that students weren’t packing enough food in their lunchbox.

“If they’re doing sport and they’re in the pool and that, they come out and they are hungry children,” said Taylor.

Any student can come to breakfast and lunch club and no roll call is kept.

Barham said it is about changing attitudes to deal with the changes in society, and responding to needs within the school community.

“You got to work really hard to create a level of comfort so that children will come in and not be judged,” she said.

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