In New Zealand, currently, more than 100,000 people are facing food shortages and are relying on food grants and parcels to feed their families every week. This is amid the Coronavirus crisis that has affected the entire world.

In these unprecedented times, the Sikh community has stepped up and fed over 15,000 families from Auckland right down to Queenstown over the past fortnight and continue to do so as hundreds of people line up daily for help. In fact, the line for food begins well before the stall for food parcel pickup even opens and extends till the end of the road and keeping on extending throughout the day.

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"People from any ethnicity and religion are welcome. We are all one and in this difficult time, we are all New Zealanders. We should all stand with the wider community," says Daljit Singh, from the Supreme Sikh Society.

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Unfortunately, each day the number of hungry families exceeds their worst predictions. "On the North Shore we expected only 350 yesterday and 750 turned out," Singh says. He adds that they're serving 12 tonnes of food a day to the community. That over and above the 70,000 food grants given each week by the Ministry of Social Development as compared to last year, when the Ministry was only handing out less than 15,000 a week around this time last year. With an increase like that, even smaller organisations are providing as much as they can in this time of grave need.

New Zealand Sikh community has really stepped up mid this crisis and we laud them for their help.

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