A Tauranga family gave up eating meat for a week so they could afford to donate a box of groceries to the people of Vanuatu.
Another couple spent an entire weekend at garage sales searching for the specific items the Ni-Van people needed most desperately.
Tauranga woman Kerri Tilby-Price has been collecting donations to fill a shipping container to send to Vanuatu since her daughter returned from the country she called her second home.
Strangers from across Tauranga have turned up at her door with bags and boxes, giving everything they could spare. It was that kind of generosity that moved Mrs Tilby-Price to tears several times during the past fortnight.
Daughter Courtney Tilby-Price was volunteering as a teacher on Pentecost Island when Cyclone Pam hit and was evacuated about a week later, having to leave behind her Ni-Van family.