Christmas Elves Wanted!

The Catalytic Foundation organises the Christmas Shoebox Appeal to bring joy to New Zealand families and children in need throughout the year, especially during the festive season. They do this by collaborating with businesses, donors and frontline community charities throughout Aotearoa.

This Christmas will be particularly hard for a lot of struggling families and children in New Zealand. The COVID-19 pandemic has meant that many children are living in households with barely enough necessities and dealing with financial hardship on top of interruptions to schooling and social routines. The pandemic has been especially tough for community charities, and the families that they support. The Catalytic Foundation Covid-19 Community Needs Survey found that 73% of frontline charities have experienced an increase in demand for their social services during the current delta outbreak.

With so many families in hardship, the Catalytic Foundation knows the importance of connecting workplaces across Aotearoa who can put together boxes of gifts, with frontline community charities working with families experiencing hardship. These boxes of aroha include something to love, something for school, something to play, something to wear and hygiene items such as toothbrushes, shampoo and soaps.

Catalytic Foundation CEO, Teresa Moore says the nationwide appeal is the ultimate collaboration between companies and their communities. Gift giving is a popular way for companies and their staff to give to those in need and get into the Christmas spirit. It’s meaningful for both the giver and the recipients.

“Last year we partnered with 32 businesses groups and 30 community charities to make sure 1556 children didn’t wake up with nothing to open on Christmas morning. This year we want to double that number”, she says.

These Christmas Shoeboxes go to children in refuges who have had to leave everything behind to escape domestic violence, they go to families struggling to put food on the table and to those spending their first Christmas in New Zealand, separated from their own culture and families.

Ultimately, this appeal is about more than just giving Christmas presents to kids, but the ripple effects; like more food on the tables of struggling families, helping people suffering with mental health issues, or even enabling broken families to reconnect with relatives and extended whanau.

It’s a small gesture of kindness, but the effect on the recipient families can be life-changing.

How people can help

1. Donate here by choosing a region you would like to support.
2. Register here to sponsor boxes to fill with gifts from your workplace

Be a Catalyst for joy this Christmas! Thank you for your support.

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