Guardian Angels bring Christmas Day joy
‘Ifelt in my heart there was a need out there,” said Donna D’Admin on Christmas Day when asked how the special delivery of 174 Christmas dinners on Christmas Day came about.
She said initial response was that people essentially wanted company on Christmas Day but she felt there a lot of people out there were struggling to provide a Christmas meal given the Covid restrictions — and she certainly was proven correct.
She said a lot of requests came from people living alone but in a number of cases she was able to persuade a neighbour “along the street” to join together and supplied two meals instead of one.
Requests came predominantly from Dannevirke but deliveries were made to Woodville, Kumeroa and Ormondville on Christmas morning, volunteers arranging to deliver to the corner where the town access met the highway. “It worked fine,” she said.
The Hub kitchen in Dannevirke was working like a well-oiled machine from early on Christmas morning as the four cold meats were carved and added to the freshly cooked new potatoes, peas and carrots into containers and packed into paper bags with pavlova, fruit salad, strawberries and cream making up the dessert to be followed by a Christmas pie.
Donna’s volunteers came from afar to help, Don and Sereena Parkinson, travelling down from Waipukurau with friends to participate, local man Sean Ratten giving up his time because his family were stuck in Australia and he was on his own, and many others who selflessly gave up time to deliver in a fleet of vans and station wagons between 11am and 1.30pm.
Donna is overwhelmed by the generosity of her volunteers for their time and effort. She and husband Murray said they could not have managed without them.
They were also very grateful to their 25 sponsors who donated in a great variety of ways, the biggest being The Warehouse which provided a $1500 gift card for Donna to buy gifts for the families. Donna personally wrapped 250 gifts to go out with the meals.
Everything went very well, Donna saying she was overwhelmed by the event and the numbers could have even been bigger had she not had to cut off requests for catering reasons.