Equippers Church food parcel project helps families

HEARTFELT: Equippers Church food packs made up by, from left, Sam Moa (youth leader), Ed Moa (lead pastor), Alena Swannell (community outreach coordinator) and Debbie Kara. Picture by Liam Clayton

Equippers Church in Gisborne is helping ease the burden for about 200 families with freshly-made food packs.

Equippers community outreach co ordinator Alena Swannell said 200 food packs, including meals home-cooked by volunteers were delivered to a range community agencies here yesterday so they could be distributed among their clients.

“Equippers Heart Week is run every year, it’s a week where we solely give. We usually have a heart party that coincides with Halloween but because of Covid restrictions we can’t have hundreds of people coming into the building. So the only other thing we could think of was to do this,” she said.

“We put out a marketing message to say people could donate $40 for a parcel, otherwise they could donate a whole parcel or donate items for a parcel.”

Alongside the food parcels the church has also been taking donations of new toys for children.

“There’s around 80 parcels ready to distribute to children at the hospital.”

A quiz night last night was to raise further funds to go towards the food packs.