In the past Stefania Pizzirani has held food drives at her workplace in Scotland. This year was no different except she now works at Rotorua's Scion.
It's thanks to Mrs Pizzirani's driving force that staff at the Crown Research Institute donated a whopping 363 items of food to The Daily Post Christmas Appeal for the Salvation Army foodbank.
The PhD student and one of her colleagues, Duncan Harrison, arrived at The Daily Post office late on Thursday afternoon with about 30 bags of food.
Mrs Pizzirani, who was born in the United States but has lived in Scotland for six years before moving to New Zealand, said she used to hold food drives at her workplace in Scotland. After reading about the Christmas appeal in The Daily Post, she set about organising a food drive at Scion.
She said to overcome "donation fatigue" she decided to organise a raffle with the entry being a can of food. She approached several businesses including Urbano, Autohaus Rotorua, Pacific MMA Gym, Aunty Annies, The Wall, Lone Star, Brew, I Love Soap.co.nz, Fat Dog and Profiles Gym who donated prizes for the raffle.
Prizes were given out at Scion's holiday party on Thursday.
She said once people saw the donations of food coming in, the donations began to snowball with some staff donating 10 items. The largest amount was donated by Mr Harrison, who donated 25 items of food. Mrs Pizzirani said she had set a goal of 300 items of food and was delighted they collected more.
"I hope this helps and I wish we could do more."
