Vinnies must advocate for poor, national president says

Writing in the Society’s 2025 annual report, Gerry Stevens said that Frédéric Ozanam, the Society’s founder, said “many a time, our job is not just to relieve a need, but perhaps more importantly, to ask why that need exists in the first place and search out ways to fix it permanently”.

“ . . . [F]ood requests [have] rocketed in some parts of Aotearoa with people becoming increasingly anxious over food security and their ability to put food on the table,” Mr Stevens said.

“Increasing numbers of requests now come from working couples who live on a tight budget which is easily upset by an unexpected and unplanned expense such as power and vehicle costs.

“It is time to seriously consider the Living Wage as a replacement for the minimum wage. If we want rising productivity levels, we need to make sure that the workers who bring about the rising productivity have less stressful levels of existence. After all, they contribute to the growth of the world’s wealth, but their share is diminishing.”

Mr Stevens said that “food parcels and the like are just stop-gap measures; we need to be advocating strongly on behalf of the poor for changes to enable them to improve their living conditions”.

“We need to be delivering more than just welfare. We must deliver love, hope and faith to all and we can only do that if we ourselves live a life of love, hope and faith.”

At the Society’s AGM in Nelson in March, Mr Stevens called for Living Wage to replace the minimum wage.

In the annual report, Society executive officer Anne-Marie McCarten said Vinnies “conferences from Northland to Southland report a marked increase in demand for their services with escalating needs evident on many fronts. Some of our foodbanks had twice as many clients as previous years”.

In 2025, throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, SVDP dispatched 61,359 food parcels, conducted 28,624 budgeting/counselling service sessions and furnished 3656 households.

FULL STORY

Society of St Vincent de Paul NZ 2025 report (Society of St Vincent de Paul NZ)

The Minimum Wage is not enough to live on,… (Tui Motu InterIslands/Society of St Vincent de Paul/Facebook)