Bellyful volunteers help make meals to distribute to struggling families with babies and young children. Photo: Bellyful
A charity dedicated to feeding new mothers is marking the milestone of delivering 200,000 free meals to struggling whānau.
Founded in 2009 by Pukekohe mother Jacqui Ritchie, Bellyful has since grown to serve families with new babies or young children in 25 communities across New Zealand.
General manager Wendy Thompson said the charity had helped many families that were going through a "tough patch" over the past 13 years, ranging from exhausted new parents who didn't have access to traditional support networks to those with babies in neonatal units or unwell family members.
"We don't offer advice. We don't judge. We just provide meals."
Those meals are made roughly once a month by the charity's more than 600 volunteers in a dedicated 'Cookathon', before being packaged up and frozen ready for delivery.
Thompson told RNZ it had taken about eight years to deliver the first 100,000 meals but the subsequent 100,000 had been delivered more quickly as the need was rising.
"Very quickly [the demand is] going up; so yes, certainly Bellyful will be going on."
The charity did not provide meals based on financial need, rather on the need for emotional support in the early stages of motherhood, she said.
"They say it takes a village, but we know for many that village does not always exist. So we're there for anyone who doesn't have those traditional support networks."
Thompson told RNZ Bellyful's many volunteers did what they did to make a positive difference in their communities.
"It's actually not about the food; for the vast majority of [the meal recipients] it's about the fact that there's someone in their community who cares: someone that they don't know - they've never heard of, they've never met - who turns up on their doorstep with some meals and who shows that their community cares for them."