Food poverty: seventeen Westmeath families receiving food parcels to stave off hunger
An ex-garda who is delivering food parcels to 455 families around the midlands each month has this week lashed out at the lack of awareness of the levels of what he is describing as “extreme” food poverty among some families.
Seventeen families in Westmeath are among those receiving food from Ken Smollen – and he is warning that there is an upsurge in borrowing from illegal moneylenders going on.
“The delay in the Back to School allowance payments this year is making it worse – and because it’s so late, all the bargains are gone now, and mothers are going without food to meet the requirements,” says Mr Smollen.
Children slept in car
His claims come as a Mullingar mother of four living in a hotel with her children since February revealed she cannot cope any more with not having a proper home.
The woman’s plea to Ken for help reveals that at one point, she and the youngsters had to sleep in the car.
Things became even bleaker when her car was seized by the gardaí because she could not afford to tax it – and after she broke down at her children’s school and told them what happened, the principal actually paid the car tax out of his own pocket so she could reclaim her vehicle and continue bringing her children to school.
Mr Smollen makes up food parcels using two sources of food.
The first source is the ‘FoodCloud’ network, which makes excess food available for distribution to the poor.
The second is via a ‘Family Rescue Team’ network that has been spreading to all villages and towns in Westmeath and Offaly which enables individuals donate – on a set date each month – a packet of ham, a packet of butter and a packet of cheese.
These ‘fresh’ donations are added to the food network supplies.
Mr Smollen said: “Each bag of non-perishable food that we deliver to families experiencing food poverty contains the following: two boxes of breakfast cereal, tea, sugar, two tins of beans, two tins of spaghetti hoops, two tins of dessert rice, two packets of soup, packet of pasta, jar of pasta sauce, packet of boil-in-the-bag-rice, two packets of biscuits and a packet of cream crackers and other items when available including tinned fish/peas/carrots, etc, and also toiletries such as toothpaste, soap, shampoo, women’s sanitary items, washing up liquid...”
To protect the privacy of those receiving the parcels, just two people have the list of families benefiting – Mr Smollen, and, in case anything were to happen to him unexpectedly and thus leave families high and dry – an assistant.
“This is the government’s fault because they made us repay the gambling debts of the banks; the bondholders; the debts of the developers,” he says, stating that just prior to his retirement in 2012, he began encountering more and more cases of people in extreme poverty – many of them homeowners left with nothing for food after meeting their crippling mortgage payments.
Some of those receiving help are former business people whose businesses have gone.
Mr Smollen says figures produced in 2013 by the trade unions Mandate and Unite showed there were 600,000 people experiencing food poverty. A researcher working on an update to that study believes there are now 759,000 in that situation.
“The 2013 figures showed there were 8,900 in Offaly, 8,700 in Laois and 9,300 in Westmeath.”
Word of Ken and his work has been spreading on social media, and anyone who wants to become a once-monthly food donor as part of his ‘Family Rescue Team’ can find out who the co-ordinator in their area is by checking the posts on Ken Smollen’s page on Facebook.
At present, he has co-ordinators in Kilbeggan; Kinnegad/Mullingar/Raharney; Ballymore; and Rochfortbridge/Milltownpass/Raharney and Mullingar.