Friends forgo birthday presents for food donations

JULIA WADE

Party food took on a new meaning in Mangawhai recently when two young locals opted for food over presents in a selfless philanthropic act set to benefit many in the community.

Mangawhai friends and neighbours, seven-year-old Jessica Nowell and five-year-old Lucy Clark both celebrated their birthdays in mid-June with separate parties. However, rather than anticipating an assortment of brightly wrapped gifts, instead the two girls asked party-goers to bring items of food for the foodbank of local social advocacy group Te Whai Community Trust.

Both girls say they feel very happy knowing they are giving to people who have little.

“Other people don’t have much food,” Lucy says. “That’s why we’re giving them some.”

“We were just going to get more stuff and we don’t need any more,” Jessica adds. “It’s also just more things for my mum to tidy up.”

The decision to swap gifts for food came about during a post-lockdown conversation between Jessica and her mother Anita Nowell, educator and owner of Kai Pai Butterfly School, on how some people were struggling financially due to the aftermath of Covid-19 restrictions.

“The rahui (lockdown) gave us a lot of time to think of others and feel blessed for what we have,” Anita says. “We talked about how after the rahui people wouldn’t have money for presents, how much we already have, and how we prefer people’s ‘presence’ over presents.”

“If they can’t afford kai they shouldn’t have to give me a present,” Jessica says.

Mum to Lucy, Mangawhai Dental owner and specialist dentist, Ellen Clark, says her daughter and herself were inspired by the idea.

“We jumped on the bandwagon… Lucy’s party was a few days after Jessica’s and so instead of 47 kinds of new toys we received bags of food!”

In total the two girls have gifted an estimated $1000 worth of edible items for Te Whai’s food bank, whose numbers of recipients ballooned from an average of three to 20 baskets per week over the differing levels of lockdown.

Besides recent funding from Northland Regional Council’s Civil Defence Emergency Covid-19 Community Support Fund, and Ministry of Social Development Emergency Response Fund, the foodbank is also supported with generous donations from both community individuals, organisations and businesses including Mangawhai Community Gardens and Mangawhai Heads Four Square.

Te Whai committee member Isabel Hollis says the donation is ‘absolutely wonderful’.

“The food will be a great help in our community,” she says. “It is lovely that people so young are thinking of others, the parents should be very proud!”
 

Gift of giving: Lucy Clark and Jessica Nowell – with their certificates of appreciation – and Te Whai member Isabel Hollis show a tiny sample of gifted food the two girls received in lieu of birthday presents.
 

“We were just going to get more stuff, and we don’t need any more.”

- Jessica Nowell