Food banks in Hong Kong
Food banks are doing their best to feed the city's needy, but so much more could be done to help their cause,writesNora Tong
For more than a year Ms Chan has had to rely on food handouts to feed her family. Every week she walks from her home in Sham Shui Po to a food bank in Shek Kip Mei to collect packets of rice, noodles and canned food. Returning with a load of about 20kg, she lugs it up the stairs to her flat on the fifth floor of a walk-up.
The food goes quickly in a household with two adults and two growing children. "We can finish a HK$100 pack of rice within a week," says Chan, who came to Hong Kong seven years ago.
Her husband makes HK$8,500 a month as a kitchen worker but rent and utilities already take up HK$2,500, and then there's travel and other expenses for the children.
"I want to enrol my elder daughter in an English tutorial class run by a charity. That means we wouldn't have enough money for food. But it is very important for her to learn English so that she can get into a good secondary school. [Coming from the mainland] neither my husband nor I can speak the language. We can't help her with her studies," says Chan.
Chan is grateful for the help her family gets from the People's Food Bank, an offshoot of the St James' Settlement charity. Launched in 2003, it's one of the more established food banks in the city, along with Food for All, run by the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals.
