Every year in New Zealand more than $800 million worth of good food goes to waste while families in need go without. At a time when lines for food banks seem to be growing longer, what can be done to help?

Every year in New Zealand more than $800 million worth of good food goes to waste while families in need go without. At a time when lines for food banks seem to be growing longer, what can be done to help?

Auckland food rescue organisation KiwiHarvest thinks it has a solution. Each day its vans head out to bakeries and supermarkets across the Supercity where they load up on good, unused food before delivering it to 50 charity groups. The organisation has only been operating since February 2015 but has already delivered more the 270,000 meals made from what they describe as 'fresh, high quality food'.

Spectrum producer Justin Gregory spent a day on the delivery route to find out how much it is helping.

Julie Crocker - logistics and volunteer co-ordinator, KiwiHarvest

We have to move away from that idea of food waste. We're not taking things out of skips.

"We try as much as we can to deliver to as many different organisations as possible. Places like women's refuges, safe houses, refugee councils and organisations, to after school care where they are taking kids off the street and giving them things to do. We deliver to a library after school programme, an early education centre in a low economic area. We deliver to many different food banks, to community dinners where people are actually engaged with the food and cooking and learning as well. Education and engagement are our pillars - to educate people about good food and how to use it and where food comes from."

Sam Mentink - driver, KiwiHarvest

There's all this amazing food and resource out there. What can I do to help?

"In New Zealand you're seeing house prices rocket and wages decrease. What does the future hold? The people that are giving out food parcels (are saying that ) a year ago they were mostly giving them to people on a benefit. Now it's also working people. Poverty is creeping up the working scale. How far is that going to go? I consider (my job) to be 80% delivery driver and 20% social worker."

Karaona Paul - administrator at Te Roopu o Te Whanau Rangimarie o Tamaki Makaurau, Otahuhu

They're either staying in the garage with their families or in their cars with their babies…

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For the last 13 years, Whangarei residents of all ages have learnt juggling, acrobatics, rope work and even fire play with Circus Kumarani.

For the last 13 years, Whangarei residents of all ages have learnt juggling, acrobatics, rope work and even fire play with Circus Kumarani.

David Steemson visits a rehearsal for their annual fire spectacular to mark Matariki next month.

The evening I arrive Frenchmen Jo de Carvalho and Mat Manamat are the tutors at Circus Kumarani. As the smiling  students arrive out of the minivan, they greet them with hugs, high fives and shouts of welcome. Than everyone has to go through their exercises.

Jason's been coming here for 13 years and grins as he says how much he enjoys it all. For the next Matariki performance he'll be up on stilts bearing a flaming staff, portraying Tane Mahuta. no less. Tonight he practices his stilt-walking and does two circuits of the room, but without flames.

Andy and Felicity are quite serious as they practice their bike wheel duet. And Katrina concentrates on her hula hoop.

Later outside in the dark, a band sets up, and a bucket of kerosene is readied. Everyone gets to practice, this time with live music and real fire. You can see the concentration on their faces. Andy and Felicity have their bicycle wheels ablaze and Katrina is busy with  her fiery hoop. Jason beams from on high as Jo, bearing his flaming umbrella, zips about shouting instructions and offering advice and help.

Circus Kumarani has been based in Dargaville for the last 13 years. It gives after-school and holiday time classes for the kids of the town and adults too. Manager Jenny Huriwai says the circus has an annual budget of  over $200,000 and it's a constant struggle to raise funds.

At the end of this evening's rehearsal a happy people head home - tired, a bit singed and smelling of kerosene.

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Locomotive engineers talk to Katy Gosset about fatalities, close calls and how KiwiRail's trauma response programme is helping.

Locomotive engineers talk to Katy Gosset about fatalities, close calls and how KiwiRail's trauma response programme is helping.

Almost every day, locomotive engineers on freight trains are challenged by cars that slip under the barrier arms at level crossings and shoot across the tracks.

Last year, nine people were killed on railway tracks in Canterbury alone.

Veteran engineer Alistair Cumming warns drivers not to take the risk:"If you misjudge it, the outcome can be the worst kind of outcome. Is it really worth it?"

The trauma of a death in a collision on a railway tracks isn't only borne by the family and friends of the person killed. It's carried by the locomotive engineer too.

Views from the cab

Peter Ryan - Team Leader for Locomotive Engineers

"It's that fight or flight instinct - your adrenaline kicks in a little bit, you sound the horn, your hand goes onto the brake, if not applying the brake, as an automatic response."

Ryan said close calls were frequent.

"Most people probably don't even appreciate or understand or the effect that that has on us."

Sometimes cars were abandoned on the tracks and, if a train driver came upon it at night, there was no chance of stopping in time. In those cases, a driver didn't know if anyone was in the vehicle until he went to look, he says.

"You hope for the best and expect the worst."

Having to inspect a vehicle, not knowing what will be found, is stressful, he says. "As you can imagine, as you walking back down the train,.. your heart is pounding and your senses are highly tuned."

Part of his job was training younger locomotive engineers and he explained to them that they were not responsible for someone else's silly actions.

"If you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, it's just your unlucky day."

Train drivers had no control over what someone might do on the track, he says.

"We're innocent victims. we just have to accept that as part of our work duties and you either deal with it or you don't. If you don't, you probably need to look for another job."

Alistair Cumming - Christchurch Freight Manager

"We all have flashbacks and things that can trigger past incidents and memories ... it's something that stays with you for a while, if not for your career, if not your life."

Cumming has been involved in nine level crossing accidents, two of them fatal. "I still think about them."…

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Earlier this year, high profile local and international artists converged on Napier to paint inner city walls with a message about the importance of marine conservation issues.

Earlier this year, high profile local and international artists converged on Napier to paint inner city walls with a message about the importance of marine conservation issues.

Sonia Sly speaks to the artists about the global street art movement

What are we doing to save our oceans and how will consumer waste and overfishing affect our current and future generations?

Tré Packard, the founder of marine conservation organisation Pangeaseed has been looking at ways to spread awareness of rising global issues that affects us all.

One of the projects run by Pangeaseed is Seawalls for Oceans-a five-day event that gives visual artists a platform to promote an important message and unite communities with a 'pictures speak louder than words' approach.

The project landed in Napier this March with the assistance of award-winning artist Cinzah Merkens.

Cinzah Merkens (NZ)

"I'm collaborating with Canadian artist Jason Botkin and I've taken out 35-metres of a wall. It's a big New Zealand long fin eel,which are becoming threatened due to man's impact on their migratory trails. They breed at one point in their lives  they're amazing creatures who live between 70-100 years old. It's an amazing opportunity as an artist to be able to have a voice and stand for something bigger than yourself. We've got a pretty incredible opportunity to portray a message and when you get given a four storey wall, why the hell not?"

Carly Ealing (US)

"It's a very physically demanding task. There's a lot of hard work, you need to put some blood, sweat, and tears into these walls.  The biggest wall I've ever painted was about 120 feet. I've been painting since I was a child and it was natural to want to bring my paintings to a larger canvas. I'm really attached to the ocean  I live close to the beach living in San Diego,  are something that I feel strongly about."

Noelle Anderson (US)

"I come from a family of artists who are also very concerned with the oceans and Pangeaseed merges those two important things. I'm at Dartmouth College where I'm studying studio art and a geography double major, which lends itself perfectly to doing projects like this, because in geography I'm studying the intersection between the environment and social justice."

Two One (Berlin) …

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A special reunion when descendants of Italians from the island of Stromboli gathered in their childhood home, Wellington's Island Bay, to celebrate their culture and history.

Off the boot of Italy lies the tiny volcanic island of Stromboli.

Violent eruptions like the sea quake in 1930 which generated 30-metre waves and a decline in the island's economy have sent periodic waves of its people - 'Strombolani'- to many countries including New Zealand.

Wellington has had its own community of Strombolani for about 100 years. It was the recent death of a leading figure which rallied others to realise that their history was slipping away before their eyes.

The 'Strombolani Connection' was formed with an initial plan to have a get- together. However things snowballed producing a reunion at parliament with 450 participants from throughout New Zealand, an exhibition  and a book about Strombolani families "Famiglie Strombolani in Nuova Zelanda". 

In the 15 years since this programme was first broadcast,  the group has seen a continuing demand for its book.  An updated edition has been printed. The 'connection' has since extended to Australia and it has revived third generation Strombolani who didn't feel Italian at all.

"Just because you are born here doesn't mean to say that a part of you isn't still rooted in that tiny Mediterranean island" says Ginette Toscano Page, a founding member of the 'Strombolani Connection'".

For Spectrum, Jack Perkins accompanies several Strombolani back to their childhood home of Island Bay.

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Any week on a Tuesday night at an Auckland marae you'll hear members of the kapa haka group Ahakoa te Aha singing for their dead sister Natasha Allen Hohepa.

Every Tuesday night at an Auckland marae you'll hear members of the Takatāpui community singing for their dead transgender sister Natasha.

Ahakoa Te Aha is a kapa haka group formed two years ago in the Takanini garage of Jade Kanara Mills, who was spurred on by the death of her transgender friend and mentor. People who join the group are either part of the "rainbow" community or they're supporters of it.

The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand says Takatāpui is the term for a Māori individual who would otherwise be called gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual or intersexual.

It says "the word is important to Māori because it acknowledges both the sexual and cultural aspects of one's identity, and has both contemporary and traditional connections with the Māori community".

The term Takatāpui was first used 130 years ago to describe the relationship of the legendary Tūtānekai with his dear friend Tiki. The story goes that the two men used to play music together. Eventually, of course, Tūtānekai married the beautiful and well-born Hinemoa after she heard him playing. The distraught Tiki married Tūtānekai's sister. So it seems sexual diversity was acceptable amongst Māori until Western moralities arrived. The word Takatāpui, meaning to be queer, has only been in common use since the 1980's, at the time of the Homosexual Law Reform Legislation. Kaiarahi at the Aids Foundation  Jordan Harris says that's as a result of the  research by academics and activists Lee Smith and Ngahuia Te Awekotuku.

Jade Kanara Mills was a teenager when she met Natasha Allen Hohepa on Karangahape Road, a street of sex shops and strip joints. Natasha was at that time in her late thirties or early forties.

"She had a very colourful life, like a lot of her sisters who came out in the late '60s and early '70s", says Jade. "She worked in the sex industry like a lot of us have."

It was an easy way to earn money but life was hard because there was a lot of discrimination from the wider community but also from family members. Jade believes there is more acceptance now within Maoridom, and it at least can be discussed.

Eventually Jade says Natasha was able to set up home, look after her partner, and care for her pets and whanau. But then she was diagnosed with cancer.

"I was quite dumbfounded actually. When you're close to someone it doesn't occur to you that they're mortal". Over Natasha's last two years, Jade and the other transgender women spent many hours with their sick friend…

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Spectrum producer Justin Gregory spends one week aboard a tall ship, sailing from Auckland to the Bay of Islands in the company of 22 American college students.

By Justin Gregory

Spectrum producer Justin Gregory spent one week aboard a tall ship, sailing from Auckland to the Bay of Islands in the company of 22 American college students.

Since the early 1970s, the Sea Education Association (SEA), based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, has been offering SEA Semester: a semester at sea for undergraduate American college students.

The fully-accredited environmental studies programme, which brings a group of students to New Zealand, aims to increase awareness of human impact on the ocean by exposing students directly to it.

Spectrum producer Justin Gregory spent one week aboard the Bobbie C

The two-masted brigantine Robert C. Seamans, affectionately known as the Bobbie C, is one of two ships operated by SEA, and the 22 young students on board the 41m training vessel come from colleges across the United States.

They come from a range of academic and social backgrounds, including a budding neuroscientist and two trainee school teachers, as well as several with a strong environmental focus.

Before travelling to New Zealand to begin the voyage, the students complete six weeks of classroom study at SEA's Woods Hole headquarters, where they cover nautical science, maritime history, anthropology and ocean science.

The programme, called 'SEA Semester: The Global Ocean', brings them to New Zealand and treats the entire country as a practical laboratory for experimentation, observation and learning.

With an emphasis on teamwork, leadership and character development, the programme is five weeks of hard sailing along the eastern coast of New Zealand with stops in the Bay of Islands, Wellington, Dunedin and Christchurch.

Once onboard the Robert C. Seamans, the students are divided into three watches and operate on six hours on and 12 hours off roster, as both deck crew and inside the two laboratories.

Under the supervision of professional sailors, they receive practical instruction in sailing the ship and are guided through their experiments by the science team in the lab.

In their down time, the students eat, sleep, have class, do homework, clean the ship and get to grips with their new life as sailors and scientists.

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