Christmas spirit shared

While most people were spending the day before Christmas buying last-minute gifts, Wellington City Mission volunteers were busy delivering boxes of goods to those with little to spare on holiday treats.

About 30 volunteers gathered at the mission’s Newtown headquarters on Christmas Eve to load up vehicles with the final 100 boxes of donated food and gifts. The Wellington City Mission’s annual gift drive saw 500 boxes of Christmas supplies given to families from Titahi Bay to the Hutt Valley struggling to make ends meet. This Christmas season the organisation has provided food for more than 3500 people and gifts for more than 2100 children.

City Missioner Murray Edridge said the ‘‘remarkable amount of stuff’’ filling up the Wellington City Mission was a hallmark of the generosity of Wellington people.

The deliveries extend to families that are helped by 40 different social services agencies across Wellington.

For Petone family the Tutugas, the four boxes of donations and a new bike meant their five children would wake up to presents under the tree. The mum, who did not want her first name to be used, said she had not been able to afford to buy any gifts this year, with most of what she did have being spent on rent. She found their six-bedroom house through Women’s Refuge.

‘‘You don’t find five, sixbedroom houses and no-one would take us in because there’s too many of us.’’

A recent survey commissioned by The Salvation Army of 1000 Kiwis found nearly one in four of the respondents could not afford to celebrate the festive season.

Ten per cent said they went without so their kids could celebrate Christmas.