Kia ora e hoa,
Whoa! We’re one week into sign ups for Shoebox Christmas and some of our projects are already full!
If you haven’t already, head over to www.kohatree.co.nz, choose your area, and sign up today to make a difference locally - because our tamariki all deserve a choice Christmas! If you’ve signed up - let your friends know in case they can help too!
One of my favorite things about Shoebox Christmas is how much of a community movement it’s become. It’s beautiful to watch people sharing the kaupapa with their friends and whānau, and encouraging others to take part.
Things like Shoebox Christmas don’t work and don’t last if there’s one person who’s responsible for it all, so that community is important. It’s also part of the reason our rangatahi leaders exist - they’re here to learn and grow, and ultimately, make Shoebox Christmas their own, in their own communities.
It’s also why we had to build our new platform Koha Tree. This platform lets us give ownership of projects like Shoebox Christmas to the people who want to lead them in their community and allows them to pass that leadership role on to others if they need to without having to reinvent the wheel or figure out how to set it up and manage it from scratch - that’s time they could be spending making things better in their community. It also means we can help in other ways like our communities have been asking for too (you’ll see the start of those other project types there now).
This is our first time using the new site (which we’re still adding to) and along with the almost guaranteed teething issues, there are some things that are just different to how we used the last website so there have been A LOT of questions. Our community of gifters has been so amazing at helping others in the central Facebook Group who are asking questions they know the answer to. We don’t have a Change Management team or a rostered contact centre of support staff. We have some awesome volunteers, our rangatahi, and me. So we appreciate your help!
That’s what community is about, contributing what we have, to make things work as best we can for everyone. Thank you for being an awesome part of that! I’m glad to say all the obvious bugs are fixed on the site thanks mostly to our amazing mate Steve who has volunteered untold weeks on this kaupapa to fix things broken and stop other other things from breaking.
If you haven’t used the new site, here’s a quick walkthrough on how to use it.
Please keep sharing with your friends and whānau, if you need a quick and easy share, here’s one we prepared earlier (with the amazing support of our friends at Stanley St who we love and appreciate):
I’ve signed up for Shoebox Christmas to lend a hand locally. Join me and show our tamariki we’ve got their back.
Head to www.kohatree.co.nz and sign up today.
#shoeboxchristmas #Kiwikids #giveagift #koha #kohatree
Ka nui te mihi! A big thank you!
Pera and the Shoebox Christmas whānau
Kia ora, is there an easy way to tell which sites still have availability without clicking and scrolling on each one?