UNIQUE TUCK SHOP

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21876, 11 August 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

UNIQUE TUCK SHOP

SCHOOL CHILDREN'S KIOSK

MOTHERS' CLUB VENTURE

Medical and educational authorities have frequently drawn attention to the tendency of school children to spend their pennies on inferior confections that undermine their health, rather than to buy nourishing food, remarks Mrs. R. R. S. Mackinnon, founder of the Junior Red Cross in Australia. A Mothers' Club in a New South Wales country town has taken steps that will overcome this, and also provide meals for school children who, through economic circumstances, are receiving inadequate nourishment at home. In the playground of the Intermediate High School at Inverell, there is a kiosk of charming design whose open windows are an invitation to all the children of the school who wish to participate in the good things served there each day by the volunteers of the Mothers' Club.

The idea of the club is to provide lunches for the schoolchildren which shall be absolutely well-balanced so that any child who partakes of this meal will receive all the vitamins necessary for twenty-four hours. It is also designed to provide suitable food for children who have not adequate nourishment at home owing to difficult circumstances, and matters are so arranged that no one knows who has paid for their lunch and who has not.

Every morning the teachers ask the children who wish for lunch at the kiosk. In addition to thdse who give their names, she herself, adds the names of those whom she thinks would benefit by the lunch, and red tickets are given to each child. The numbers from each clas3 are sent out to the kiosk and provision is made accordingly. The scheme is very well organised and has interested the big hotels of the town, with the result that every day large cans of soup are sent lip from one or other ot these establishments.

A cup of soup or a cup of cocoa may be obtained for the sum of Id, while a packet of sandwiches of four of bread, niade of wholemeal, with egg, lettuce, cheese, banana, jam, and date fillings, are given to each child for the sum of 3d. This is the winter menu. In summer, fruit cup or milk shake replace; the soup and cocoa. Every day 15 loaves of wholemeal bread afe used, four pounds of butter, four gallon.- of milk, three gallons of soup, oranges, lemons, eggs, bananias. and four head of lettuce. The sandwiches a-e wrapped in greaseproof paper of which 51b. is used a week. Cheese is another popular item, and 71b. is used a fortnight. Donations of cocoa, jam, and eggs are sometimes given, but all the other goods are purchased. The whole matter has the complete" approval of the Minister and Director of Education. , A feature of the kiosk is that it has wooden flaps or shutters on four of its octagonal sides which let down when the children come to be served, and when put into place do awav with any fear of breakages or injury with football or other games of the children. The enterprise might well be imitated in New Zealand, where children, left to their own devices, are likewise apt to spend their pennies on very unwholesome and unsuitable lunches.