Photo/Illutration Food is sent to needy families this winter. About 30 companies donate the food, and some items are purchased by Save the Children. (Ryuichi Hisanaga)

An increasing number of needy families with children are facing further financial difficulties with the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and soaring prices for food, utilities and other daily necessities.

“Many people say they can’t even carry on a normal life and are hanging by a thread,” said Yukiko Tsuji, 48, a certified social worker in Osaka Prefecture who delivers food to families and young people in need.

To help, Save the Children, an international nongovernmental organization working to support children, is delivering food to 5,000 such households across Japan in December.

The project is called “Children’s food-support boxes for winter vacation.” The boxes are filled with around 40 types of food, such as 5 kilograms of rice, rice cakes and instant soup.

The boxes weigh about 15 kilograms each.

About 30 companies donated food, and some also helped prepare the shipments.

MORE THAN EXPECTED

Ten people were working hard packing boxes at a warehouse in Chiba Prefecture in late November.

Save the Children has been providing food assistance to needy families with children since 2020, when the pandemic began.

As school lunches are not provided during summer and winter vacations, costs for food tend to weigh heavily on such families. The group has been sending boxes to them during these periods since last year.

This summer, the organization planned to provide food assistance to around 3,000 households, just as the previous year.

However, it received applications for the boxes from more than 5,000 households.

“Many families, including single-parent households, are still struggling to make ends meet,” said Sonoko Kawakami, Save the Children Japan’s domestic program chief.

In a survey the organization conducted, 70 percent of the households it assisted said they “cannot buy enough food” this winter. The ratio was 60 percent in the summer.

The group believes poverty could become worse.
“I could no longer afford to buy milk because the price had gone up by 30 yen (22 cents),” one struggling person said.

Another said: “The rising utilities prices are weighing on me. Even though I keep my room dark during the day, I can’t save money.”

Tsuji stresses the government should provide prompt and generous support to those who need assistance due to the soaring costs of living.

“Authorities can collect data about ‘those who seem to be in need’ by checking recipients of school-expense subsidies and child-rearing allowances,” she said.

“I would like officials to use such data to provide as many cash payments as possible, rather than just saying ‘there may be people who don’t need it,’” she added.

(This article was written by Ryuichi Hisanaga and Natsumi Nakai.)