News for You from Ohariu

January - June 2020

Zooming through

Lockdown

During April and May, our club

adapted to the national

lockdown for COVID19 and met

virtually via Zoom. It was good

to be able to see each other

and catch up on how people

were, though we are all eager

to be able to continue with our

projects!

Janine & Katrina dialled in to

the District Fifteen awards

Zoom that replaced the District

Conference. We were

disappointed not to win any

major awards, but the projects

that other clubs completed

were amazing! Lots of

inspiration for us.

Book Drive for Arohata Prison

In January we started a Book Drive for Arohata Prison. Janine contacted Lori, the

prison librarian, to ask what books would be best suited to donate. We made the

poster on the left to share on Facebook, asking for pre-loved books in good condition

from the community. The post went viral, reaching over 40,000 people!

Our drop-off points were flooded with hundreds of books. In early February we sorted

the first round of donations. It took a couple of hours to check the quality of what we

received, sort into genre, and re-box for delivery.

We received some donations that didn't quite meet the criteria for the Arohata library.

Several bags of novels were delivered to the Tairangi School Community Library in

February too, so that parents could take a book home to read.

With donations received right until early March, we still have several hundred books at

our drop-off points that are sorted and ready for donation to the prison and

community libraries. We look forward to distributing these soon!

Collection for the Heart

Foundation

On the 22nd of February, six

Altrusans collected almost $500

for the Heart Foundation NZ

Annual Appeal

Thank you to Kiran, Trudi, Debbie,

Yolanda, Vicki and Janine, for

collecting. The Heart Foundation

said “thank you for your amazing

contribution to the Big Heart

Appeal 2020 – our success, is

because of you!”.

Thanks to the generous shoppers

at Churton Park New World for

their donations

House of Grace

In March we donated $2000 to The House of Grace in Wellington to purchase a fold-down bed for their downstairs

office. All the bedrooms in the house are upstairs and restricted to girls and house family only. The downstairs bed will

be used by girls who can't manage the stairs, for medical examinations, and overflow accommodation. Because it folds

away, the room can still be used as an office too!

The House of Grace accommodates and equips young pregnant teens with the skills they need to become successful

mothers. They were grateful for our donation, saying "Your support is so very important and helps build a positive start

in life for a new generation of families."

This was the first part of our project to support House of Grace. We are looking forward to being able to complete our

hands-on service activities to help clean and garden at the house and provide baking for the residents to enjoy!

Altrusa Bee Garden

Our Altrusa Bee Garden has been flowering during its first summer, after recovering from a rocky start to life!

We started the year with an Altrusa picnic in the sun at the park where our garden is planted. It seems like

so long ago that we ate, chatted, had a visit from the neighbourhood cat and saw some bees!

In January we also did some weeding, while the ground was very dry and hard, to make room for our flowers

to grow. A local neighbour of the bee garden helped dig a border around the garden bed, to improve drainage

and soil quality for the plants. These activities helped our flowers continue to bloom through to the end of

summer.

We're planning to let our flowers die-off naturally as we head into Winter, then we'll remove the annuals,

dig over the bed, add compost, and sow some more bee-friendly seed to fill the garden with vibrant colour

in Spring! We have already purchased bee-friendly seed mix that is waiting to be planted.

As New Zealand entered Level 3, Altrusa Ohariu were approached by a local supermarket about

partnering on a collection for a local foodbank. Food services are seeing increased demand as

people feel the impact of COVID19 on their livelihoods.

Churton Park New World setup a donation trolley in their foyer, with support from Altrusa to list

the items that foodbanks usually require. The supermarket matched every donation made, creating

double the impact!

Emily from Altrusa worked to find a local foodbank who were operating in Level 3 and able to

receive donated goods. As the supermarket prepared the donation they said “We have had boxes

and boxes filling trolley after trolley of food to take to the Newlands Community Centre for those in

need”

It was cool to be able to make a small positive difference in a non-contact service project!

Food Bank Collection

New Club Board

A big welcome to our new Club Board. Thank you for volunteering to lead Altrusa Ohariu for the 2020/21 year.

Janine (President), Kiran (President Elect), Sophia (Treasurer), Debbie (Secretary), and Katrina (Past President)

WELLfed Foundation Grant Application

WELLfed teach people to plan, shop, safely prepare, and cook, low-cost healthy meals. Altrusa Ohariu have applied for an Altrusa

International Foundation Grant to purchase illustrated cookbooks to be awarded to 150 graduates of WELLfed community

cooking classes for their ongoing use.

WELLfed serve a low socioeconomic area and co-design their program with the community to ensure that their recipes and classes

make a real difference. The Altrusa provided cookbooks will have step-by-step illustrated instructions suitable for cooks with low

literacy to successfully provide nutritious food for their families.

WELLfed were deemed an essential service and remained operational within the restrictions imposed throughout the COVID19

nationwide lockdown in New Zealand. All of their face-to-face cooking classes were suspended, instead the WELLfed team

dropped food parcels to households and ran cooking classes remotely via Zoom.

Altrusa plan to provide hands-on support to help maintain the WELLfed community gardens that supply fresh ingredients too.

Thank You

A thank you from Gillian George (via

Debbie). Gillian lives in Tawa and

once upon a time belonged to the

Altrusa Mana Club (since folded).

"… I was helping little new entrants

reading yesterday at my old school,

Linden School and they had really

lovely brand new level 1 readers that

the kids seem to enjoy sponsored by

Ohariu Altrusans. Your funds

couldn’t be better spent and most

appropriately from a librarian!! …

I‘ve been volunteering there for

several years with the same

excellent teacher. It’s great to see

the kids progress with their reading

and make a small difference."