The Rotorua Daily Post caught up with Gina Peiffer from Love Soup Rotorua.
In the last five years Love Soup Rotorua has helped house more than 300 families and 40 "streeties", hosted dinners at least five nights a week, and distributed food rescue parcels to around 15,000 people in the Bay of Plenty and down to Turangi.
But founder Gina Peiffer doesn't looktired, despite taking her first day off "in a while" on Christmas Day.
Instead, she's full of energy and plans for the year ahead.
"If we had the backing we would be able to provide what we do on a much larger scale," she told the Rotorua Daily Post.
People in need eating a dinner prepared by Love Soup Rotorua. Photo / File
Peiffer admits Love Soup Rotorua's services have "exploded" since first starting in April 2014.
"We simply built it around what the homeless told us they wanted."
She and husband Elmer have collected numerous awards and accolades for their work since, including the Trustpower Community award, Kiwibank Local Hero awards.
Gina Peiffer and Elmer Peiffer, founders of Love Soup Rotorua. Photo / File
In Peiffer's view, there are three types of homeless people, "streeties, car people and families".
"The families are a result of the housing market here, but they outnumber all the other groups."
The Peiffers have built relationships with real estate agents and help hopeful tenants with debt, house maintenance, and tenancy management "so landlords feel safe enough to give them that opportunity".
"We stay on board for the term of the tenancy. You need to for the whole time because stuff happens, things go wrong, you don't plan for them... If they've got someone they can go to for support and ask 'How do I do this? What do I do here?' it empowers people."
Peiffer said Countdown had been one of the biggest supporters of their work, mainly through the food rescue programme.
The supermarket chain's policy is to donate safe, high-quality surplus food to charities and food banks throughout New Zealand to aim for "zero food waste".
This equates to around $3.7 million of food to food banks, plus an additional $2.1m of food to farmers as food scraps for animals across the country each year.
Rotorua Boys' High School is one of the biggest supporters of the weekly dinner service.
Rotorua Boys' High School prefect Semisi Paea helps unload a pallet of UHT milk for the team at Love Soup Rotorua. Photo / File
Peiffer has a team of six to eight each week, including two to four "hostel boys" on rotation.
The volunteer team put in an extra big effort around Christmas.
"This is a hard time of year for the homeless as this is when they feel the most abandoned and are most at risk of suicide, as most agencies and services close down till early January."
She said she knew of streeties who had offended in the past to ensure they were in jail at Christmas to "have food and somewhere to sleep".
Last year the charity hosted 36 homeless people for Christmas dinner and provided bags of gifts for the men and women at the dinner, and families in the community.
The additional help from donors at Christmas included boxes full of food and more than 350 parcels of gifts from My Food Bag, delivered by New Zealand Post.
"Those boxes were just phenomenal," Peiffer said.
Love Soup Rotorua preparing food. Photo / File
Peiffer said one of the hardest parts of Love Soup's work was trying to support the "car people" or hidden homeless.
"People have this strange notion that if they're homeless, Work and Income are going to stop their benefit and the Government's going to take their children away and neither of those are true. People need to know that... Those agencies are there to help."
