Breakfast Club’s Steve Farrelly becomes a TVNZ Good Sort

First a little bit about the Breakfast Club. While the name would suggest it just provides cereal and toast for hungry kids, Breakfast Club has become so much more than that.

Feeding children is always the most important issue to address in a struggling school, but it’s also a very useful vehicle for conversations on what is preventing individual students from learning and ascertain what can be done to help. It might be a lack of shoes, problems in the home, no budget for sanitary products or no way to stay dry on a rainy day. The struggles some kids have are beyond what many of us could ever imagine.

Breakfast Club’s sole purpose is to find a way to assist principals and teachers to get kids what they need so they can concentrate on learning and creating a better future for themselves. Founded in 2010 by Steve Farrelly, an ex-police officer with a soft spot for cheeky, hungry kids, Breakfast Club now has an amazing team of volunteers and supporters who help every day in a million different ways.

Breakfast Club has been supported by Auckland East and Epsom Rotary and other organisations over the past few years with Steve Farrelly and Jono Hendricks (principal of Glen Innes School) becoming honorary members of the Auckland East club in 2017.

Steve Farrelly (L), Jono Hendriks (C) with President Dennis Millard (R).

From the TVNZ website:

Tonight's Good Sort is Aucklander Steve Farrelly, a former policeman who started a breakfast club charity. Steve's retired but not idle, he started the charity that began feeding kids 10-years ago but then he realised they needed much more than food.

"We've done about $3 million worth of donated goods," he says. “Making sure when families need something, they get it.”

Now he’s using his contacts to make life easier for those in need and helping make school a place kids want to go.

To watch the TVNZ clip, click on Good Sort and Breakfast Club and for further information.