The child-poverty tackling Kiwi initiative Fill Their Lunchbox is ending after its founding chef was struggling financially, however its founder is putting the call out to "passionate and action-minded" people to continue feeding hungry children.
Christchurch chef Ben Atkinson started the Fill Their Lunchbox venture in 2015 and it has donated more than 54,000 lunches to disadvantaged children since then.
Speaking on TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning, Atkinson said he realised there was "quite a significant need to help more children in Christchurch".
"So we quit out jobs and went full time, operating a buy one, gift two model."
However the model did not work.
"There's a lot of reasons why it didn't, financially, one of the main ones would be, for myself it's my first run at anything like this.
"I just worked as a fry chef prior to that and played in metal bands."
Mr Atkinson said despite shutting the doors, they were also "hitting the reset button".
They still have the delivery van and container kitchen, and were hoping to get people together to form a charitable trust to take on the assets, to still get lunches "and more so education [gets] out to the kids and their families".
"We would love for anybody who is really passionate and is an action-minded person to get in touch with us, especially if you're in Canterbury... so they can take what we've started and use it as a springboard to continue doing good stuff."
The scheme will end on August 10.
For more information, click here or email info@filltheirlunchbox.co.nz
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