support group lends a helping hand

 

BY JULIA WADE

Within their first year of offering food parcels one of Mangawhai’s helpful hand-up charities highlights the hardship some locals are facing to feed their families. 

Throughout 2019 charitable trust Mangawhai Helping Hands (MHH) have gifted 50 food baskets to people in the greater Mangawhai area, the unfortunate but necessary assistance made possible thanks to the generosity from Kaipara’s closet supermarket MHH administrator Libby Clews says. 

“We’ve been very fortunate to receive regular donations of groceries from Countdown Warkworth for the past year,” she says. “We are so extremely grateful for Countdown’s co-ordinator Mark Sosich who approached Helping Hands and set up the donations, store manager Tony Petrie and the friendly delivery drivers that bring the food over.” 

Besides the food parcels, the donations help provide lunches for local children and maintain MHH’s #mealsforfamilies program. 

On average two families a week who are experiencing tough times such as monetary stress, bereavement, sickness, a new baby, ‘or even if they are an awesome community worker’, benefit from MHH’s cooked meals program. 

Parents struggling to put together healthy school lunches due to financial hardship are also able to receive a box of nutritional food plus treats every second month which are put together by volunteer Shannon Poynter. 

The food parcels are on top of items MHH donate weekly to sister site Mangawhai’s Helping Paws, ‘our friends at Te Whai’ or the dozens of boxes full of gifts for MHH’s Kids Christmas party.

“In the good old days companies put on Christmas parties but these don’t seem to happen anymore so I want to give the kids of MHH this experience and a gift especially if their families struggle at Christmas time,” Clews says. “We’ve seen a legitimate regular need for help within the community, Mangawhai has all walks of life and there needs to be more support for families and individuals in the area.”

 Struggling and need a helping hand? Visit Mangawhai Helping Hands or Te Whai Community Trust facebook pages. 

MHH administrators Libby Clews (left) and Jasmine Vaughan putting together food parcels which they say are of huge value to those that are struggling. PHOTO/JULIA WADE