How is the Hikoi Koutou Charitable Trust helping vulnerable and isolated people in the Hawkes Bay during COVID-19?

Hikoi Koutou Charitable Trust

Les from the Hikoi Koutou Charitable Trust told this story about the important work the Trust is doing in the Hawke's Bay: 

Hikoi Koutou Charitable Trust’s vision is to advocate and reach out to less fortunate families to inspire and help them fulfill their potential, and move to bigger and better opportunities in life.

Established relationships and our customer database enabled us to work with whanau and identify their needs. We started providing support within a couple of days of lockdown.

It saddened our volunteers when vulnerable and isolated whanau felt too ashamed to ask for help during COVID-19 Level 4 lockdown, and in some cases it led to dysfunction, home conflict and suicide.

We’re so pleased we’ve been able to support vulnerable whanau in over 120 homes over the last 4 weeks by delivering essentials such as kai, care and medication packs.

A typical day starts at 5.30am shopping and packing 7- 8 trolleys of essentials kai which takes a couple of hours. Our local Flaxmere New World owner, with support from Hastings Councilor Henare O’Keefe, has allowed us to get early access.

After breakfast we make up 20 kai and care packs. These are delivered to homes where we spend 5-10 minutes. By the end of the day we have completed 5-7 hours of volunteer work and travelled 60-80kms.  

We do this work because we care and because we have great partners like Lotteries, Ministry of Social Development and E Tu Whanau who provide us with resources to allow us to support our community. No other funding has been received to help us with this work.

We’ve seen and witnessed the after effects; broken hearts and shattered dreams because of layoffs and loss of income, when the ability to provide for whanau as a bread winner or a pillar of hope is stripped away. We are acutely aware that there will be a lot of work post level 4 and 3 and 2 lockdown.

Feedback From Whanau

The picture below is screenshots from social media which give a good indication of how the community feels about the Trust's mahi and their dedicated volunteers.