Kia ora whānau,
Firstly and most importantly, he mihi nui tēnei ki a koe. A big thanks to you.
Thank you for whatever part you played in helping us find more beautiful people in our community to help give a smile to our tamariki. I know we’ve been talking a lot about the challenges of this year, but right now I want to celebrate the awesome-ness that comes out of those challenges and how amazing our little community has been at pulling together in such a big way to find support where we needed it most.
Arita and I will take the gifts dropped off in Tawa out to Wainuiomata and Te Awakairangi ki Tai at lunch time today. Thank you to everyone who bush-whacked their way through the lawns and garden which get very neglected through this stage of our kaupapa, to drop your amazing koha off. Don’t judge me based on my yard - I’ll be out there with the weedeater as soon as Shoebox Christmas is done :p
With your help, we’ve very nearly been able to find gifters for all of our tamariki for the schools that need them this week.
We still have a few left where we either:
A) Haven’t been able to find a gifter to match with that child
or B) Gifters haven’t delivered the koha they signed up for yet (there’s always a number that don’t arrive after being signed up for).
The areas where we still have the most tamariki unmatched or koha undelivered are:
Lower Hutt (with Tawa drop off)
People have been asking what happens if we don’t find gifters for tamarki, when that happens (and it does) we will either give the schools some money and a staff member will battle the hoards of Christmas shoppers to put together something for those tamariki, or our rangatahi leaders and I will spend a couple of days buying and putting those gifts together and dropping them off.
Obviously, this can get pretty expensive across the 200+ services and schools we’re working with, and it isn’t something we have money sitting around for but we’ll make it work - probably via the first half of 2024 being spent on fundraising or business sponsorship pitches :( Most philanthropic organisations are really strict about not paying for anything that’s already happened (even though most funding applications have processing cycles of multiple months - so paying for something unplanned that’s already happened is tricky). *edits out continued moan about the state of philanthropic funding in Aotearoa.
We’re at the time of year where we start sending out emails thanking everybody who took part. Please bear with us as we put our email inboxes and automation skills through their paces with these! Some of you might get more than one thank you depending on where you helped out - but we reckon there’s no such thing as too many thanks!
Finally, in case nobody has told you today, you’re awesome. Thank you for being a part of our team and community, whatever part you play.
Have an awesome week, and if it’s as sunny there as it is here today, I hope you enjoy some of that gift from Tamanui-te-Rā (the sun).
Kia pai te rā - have a good day,
Pera
PS thank you to everyone who has been sharing their gift ideas and kōrero on the Instagram page - checking these is super fun and inspiring :)
Kia ora Sarah, yes you can, Arita and I will likely be out shopping tomorrow for some of the missing gifts, so any help towards that would be amazing thank you :) https://givealittle.co.nz/org/shoebox-christmas
Kia ora Rosie - yes it is, thank you!