“I hate the term foodbank because, for many people, the bank is not their friend.”
Everything I do has an air of chaos about it – that’s my ADD superpower,” Sophie Gray tells me frankly. She’s not joking. She does have ADD, but she says, “It’s not a disadvantage outside the education system. If it involves something I’m interested in, it 100% holds my attention.”
Sophie is probably best known to New Zealanders for her Destitute Gourmet cookbooks, which are full of delicious things you can cook on a budget and came out of a particularly lean period in her own life.
When we meet at her home on Auckland’s North Shore, the former Food magazine editor is calmly organising a stack of donated goods to feed the area’s hungry.
The leafy suburbs of the City of Sails’ northern beaches might seem an unlikely place to find a food bank, but in these uncertain times, Sophie says there is an overwhelming need. Local food banks have seen 30% growth in demand in the past six months. “I don’t think the average Kiwi has the remotest idea how vast and complex the issue of ingrained poverty is.”
“Clients” are referred to her Good Works Trust Foodbank by a raft of social workers from government agencies and community groups. Sophie says, “I hate the term ‘foodbank’ because, for many people, the bank is not their friend. I’d really like to change the name.”
It was her brother-in-law, the pastor at the Shore Vineyard Church, who convinced her to manage the GWT Foodbank. She was supposed to fill in for the departing CEO for three weeks. A year on, she’s still there and attacking the job with her characteristic passion.
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