Successes of Rotary Club of Porirua
Christmas cheer to the communities of Porirua City
Rotary Porirua teamed up with local business, other community organisations, friends and families of Rotary to deliver some of their planned projects in the community this Christmas:
Food collection for St Anne’s Food Pantry: During November, members trialled a new way of collecting food items instead of the annual Christmas Toot 4 Tucker. This is due the current Alert Level 1 and members still wanted to be able to collect food items. They set-up the Aotea parking at the Jasmine Underhill reserve, and invited the Aotea community to ‘drop off’ their donations of non-perishable food items over two days to Rotary members at the car park. All the items collected were donated to the St Anne’s Food Pantry who also got involved in the promotions and collections. Members enjoyed a fish and chips dinner after the first night of the collection.
The Christmas Shoebox pressie which is in its second year has again been very popular with local businesses like New World Porirua, Countdown Aotea, PaperPlus North City, New World Whitby and friends of Rotary. They have sponsored items to fill 160 shoes boxes. It has been so good to see the support from local businesses collaborating with Porirua Rotary to give back to the communities. Each shoebox contains books, stationery, grocery items, toys, games, sweet treats and toiletries. The shoebox pressies were distributed to Te Kura Maori o Porirua school and Tairangi school in Ascot Park, St Anne’s Food Pantry, Wesley Community Action Group in Waitangirua. There are a few boxes to go another organisation before Christmas. Lots of smiles and excitement from the students and families.
Christmas wrapping at North City shopping mall: Each year the Club together with Zonta provide a gift wrapping services to the North City shopping mall. Shoppers can get their gifts wrapped for a gold coin donation. All proceeds from the gift wrapping supports Porirua Rotary’s community projects. This time at the mall enables members to engage with the local shoppers where great ideas on what is being done and can be done in the community are exchanged. There have been some verbal positive comments about Rotary too.
College End of Year Prize- Giving: This year the Club approached the local colleges about The Community Builders award for students who have made a difference in their school and wider community during this year of the pandemic. Two schools responded and members of the Team attended the Aotea College and Porirua College end of year awards to present to the Year 11, 12 and 13 senior students. Well done to all students!
It has been a challenging year for our Team and many others in our community, and we can appreciate such tough times which is why we are trying to do what we can to support where we can, says President, June Murugan. We are all looking forward to a few days of break over the Christmas holidays to recharge and we should be ready to start the new year with the Waitangi Day celebrations.
Happy holidays to all Rotarians and remember to be kind to yourself too.
