Christmas appeal: Making it easy for businesses to donate food

Hayley McIsaac, Edvance instructional designer, is running a can drive with all the businesses she works with throughout the city. Photo/Andrew Warner

Making it easy for businesses to donate food to Tauranga Community Foodbank is one organisation's way of doing good.

Workplace education company Edvance is encouraging businesses to sign up for its city-wide can drive and wants to get as many companies on board as possible.

Hayley McIsaac, Edvance instructional designer, said she or a colleague would drop a banana box to any workplace to gather donations of non-perishable food items or sanitary products, then a staff member would pick them all up on November 30.

Ms McIsaac was approaching Edvance's clients and asking them to put a box in their workplaces to collect items andwas also "pounding the pavement" and knocking on the doors of nearby businesses.

So far, she had 15 businesses on board and hoped to sign up 30.

"The joy of it is we're not asking people for dollars or anything like that. That's when people might be a bit hesitant to give. But when you go into your cupboard and grab a can or a bag of pasta, that's different.

"It gives people a little bit of a Christmassy feel in the lead up to Christmas."

Ms McIsaac championed the same cause last year and signed up 28 businesses, collecting three carloads of food and personal products.

This meant the organisation had collected enough food for about 20 families.

"It's so easy for us. We're just making the task easy for people out there that like to do something but it's not always that simple."

On November 30, she and her colleagues will take a half-day off work to drive around and collect all the donations boxes from the businesses.

They will then go in convoy to deliver the food to the foodbank.

Ms McIsaac said doing a day of good for the community strengthened them as a team.

"The big thing is, we all know each other day-to-day in a business sense, but we don't really communicate with each other in a personal sense. By doing this, we do. We get taken out of a business environment and start chatting about other things.

"We're out there hitting the road and that's fun.

"It's exciting for us."