Demand triples for Wellington charity during lockdown

While many businesses saw a drop in demand for their services during the Covid-19 lockdown, others saw it ramp up – especially those which provide social support in our communities.

Wellington charity, Kiwi Community Assistance (KCA) saw three times the normal demand for its services during lockdown.

“We usually redistribute about 15 tonnes of food every 20 days, [but] during lockdown we redistributed over 44 tonnes of food in 20 days” says Tracy Wellington, KCA’s Co-Founder.

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KCA help reduce inequality in the community by redistributing surplus food, clothing and school supplies to frontline agencies including Soup Kitchen Wellington and St Anne’s Pantry Foodbank.

“Social distancing restrictions meant that we went from 93 volunteers to just 7 volunteers and 1.5 paid employees over-night” says Tracy.

“We were on a mission to continue to support as many people as possible with reduced volunteers, which meant non-stop 14-hour days to keep up.

A key part of keeping up with increased demand was a $25,000 grant from the ANZ NZ Staff Foundation, donated to KCA last year, which was used to buy a second larger food chiller truck for the charity.

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Watch this video to understand more about the incredible work that Kiwi Community Assistance does (this video was first released in December 2019 by ANZ NZ and published here).

“We’re especially grateful for the second truck because our only other truck was old and it broke down at the start of lockdown."  

“We were also able to collect larger volumes in this truck.”  says Tracy.

Keeping up with Covid-19 health and safety regulations meant even longer days for KCA volunteers.

“After each trip, we sterilized the truck which took an extra 2 hours of labour each day."

“Our frontline team has truly gone above and beyond and I’m really proud of them.”

Visit KCA’s website or Facebook for more information about the charity and how to donate.

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About the ANZ Staff Foundation

The ANZ Staff Foundation is a charitable trust founded in 2000. Since then it has donated more than $6 million to local charities and has become a leader in payroll giving in New Zealand.

ANZ staff can donate a percentage of their wage each week, and for every dollar given ANZ matches their contribution $2 for $1. In 2019 the foundation donated more than $626,000 to Kiwi charities to support their important work.

Applications for the next round of funding for ANZ New Zealand’s Staff Foundation open on July 1st 2020.

Find out more