Hungry for change
Julie Chapman knows better than most the harsh reality of life for many of New Zealand’s most impoverished families. The charity she founded, KidsCan, will this year feed more than 30,000 children. For many of them, the food they receive at school will be the only nutritious meal they’ll get. When one little boy who received a KidsCan meal was asked what he’d had for dinner the night before, he replied, “Red soup.” Was it tomato? “No.” Red soup was the water that red sausages had been boiled in the day before.
Such is life for the one in four Kiwi kids growing up in poverty.
Julie is a self-confessed doer. “I like creating solutions to social issues not being addressed,” she tells me frankly. We chat in her office in north Auckland, above a warehouse crammed with food, clothing and sanitary items destined for children
