Christmas can be a stressful time, but a joint initiative between food rescue organisation KiwiHarvest and Healthy Families Invercargill is hoping to make things a bit easier for families this year. 

A Christmas Food Drive is being organised by Healthy Families Invercargill, with donated food items to go to KiwiHarvest. KiwiHarvest redistributes the items to support food bank agencies in Southland. 

The Food Drive will run from December 6 – 10. 

Healthy Families Invercargill systems innovator Megan Dawson said Christmas was a tough time for a lot of people, especially this year when Covid-19 had had a significant impact on the community.  

“So many people in our community are struggling to put good, nutritious kai on their tables. As a community we need to work together to ensure that families have access to things they need, and that, of course, includes food. Hopefully by working together we can help make things a little easier for some of our most vulnerable families this Christmas.”  

Perishable food items including meat, bread, and eggs can be donated, as can non-perishable items. It would also be great if some Christmas kai items could be donated.  

“It IS for Christmas, after all,” Megan said.  

To add to the benefit, KiwiHarvest has also been announced as a beneficiary of this year’s Waihopai Lions Christmas Tree Festival at ILT Stadium Southland.  

A “gifting tree” will be set up at the festival for people to donate food items. 

The food drive and Christmas tree festival details were announced at a celebration officially launching KiwiHarvest in Invercargill last week.  

“We are wanting to support KiwiHarvest to be successful by connecting them with a wide local network, a sustainable coordinated approach, where our whole community contributes,” Megan said. 

KiwiHarvest Invercargill branch manager Jessie Beer said there was a huge need for food rescue in Southland, with 18 recipient agencies already signed up to receive the redirected food rescued by KiwiHarvest.  

“Since we established in August 2021, we have already rescued more than 40 tonnes of food and redirected that to the table of our agency’s clients. This equates to up to 400kg of food being rescued and redirected to those who need it, every day.”  

KiwiHarvest took over the reins of food rescue in the south from the Southland Food Rescue Trust.  

Southland Food Rescue Trust founding trustee Lesley Soper, who, along with fellow founding trustee Pip Munro, attended the Kiwi Harvest launch, agreed there was a need for large scale food rescue efforts in Southland.  

“We are absolutely thrilled to hand the kaupapa over to KiwiHarvest.” 

Article added: Friday 3 December 2021