School breakfast club programmes in Auckland: Examining community, responsibility and partnerships

Abstract

In New Zealand, a partnership approach is being increasingly advocated for rectifying societal ills through collaborative efforts from the third sector, the corporate sector and the state. This increasing trend is often articulated through neoliberal political rationalities that emphasise individual and community-based responsibilities for the provision of social welfare. KidsCan and KickStart Breakfast are two of the largest food-in-schools programme providers currently operating in Auckland that embody this approach in aim of alleviating child poverty and food insecurity through breakfast club programmes. These programmes simultaneously rely on financial support from corporate and government-based investments and the altruism of parents, teachers and church groups volunteering to run the clubs in school communities. This research establishes a framework based upon a critique of neoliberal governmentalities, combining a broader understanding of the market-driven processes of neoliberalisation in New Zealand together with insights into localised manifestations of these processes specific to the breakfast clubs. To examine how breakfast club programmes in schools work to address food insecurity and child poverty in Auckland, this thesis explores the growing emphasis on individual responsibility for the acquisition of food to avoid hunger in particular and how the resulting relationships between volunteers, communities, the government and these organisations are justified by efforts to combat over-reliance on state-based welfare benefits and the reinvigoration of a sense of active citizenship and social responsibility amongst these key actors. Participant observations of breakfast clubs in two Auckland low-decile primary schools and semi-structured interviews with key individuals from KidsCan and KickStart Breakfast and from within the school communities highlight that breakfast club programmes produce a multitude of positive outcomes for the attending students and additionally establish a range of complex and contradictory relationships between individuals running the breakfast clubs on the ground and individuals implementing the programmes from the level of the organisation and government. Findings suggest it is these ties that simultaneously justifies the existence of the programmes and depoliticises experiences of hunger and poverty in New Zealand. Keywords: neoliberalism, governmentalities, food insecurity, child poverty, New Zealand