7-days of Christmas cheer

For the fourth year running a collective of south Auckland Marae are operating their 7-Days-of-Christmas campaign to distribute food and presents to whanau in need.

"For seven days we're providing kai parcels, Christmas presents as well as vaccinations to 200 families," said Puhihuia Wade, essential services manager at Manukau Urban Māori Authority.

"(It's) an annual event that we've been holding for four years... in partnership with the City Mission as well as MSD."

Booster and second vaccinations are being offered as part of the campaign. Photo / Michael Craig

Ngā Whare Waatea Marae, Papakura Marae and Manurewa Marae are all giving kai parcels, presents for kids and second and booster vaccinations over seven working days.

Data from the Mission reveals that collectively 1600 food parcels a week are being distributed currently – a figure significantly higher than 450, the pre-Covid average. Since August more than 20,000 food parcels have gone out to feed 82,000.

"It's been an unprecedented year. The Delta variant has made it into our community in a big way," Wyn Osborne, chief executive of the Manukau Urban Maori Authority said.

Kai parcels and tamariki Christmas presents available at Nga Whare Waatea Marae. Photo / Michael Craig

"We felt it was important to uphold our tradition of providing some extra manaaki and hope for whānau heading into the holiday season.

"If any whānau see this as an opportunity to get their vaccination, we have dedicated time to this process on 20 December."

Delivery will be contactless and all kaimahi are required to be double vaccinated and have returned a recent negative Covid test.

"After such a long covid lock down we see our own staff and community quite fatigued," Wade said.

"So, after a really hard end of year what we wanted to do is to make 7 Days of Christmas as good as possible and as great as can be, not just for our whanau but also for our tamariki.

"If that meant that all of our staff were going to come back on site and provide such a great event then that was what was going to happen."