It’s the small things that can make a big difference when you have a new baby, a sick child in hospital, or are a parent dealing with other life events but still have kids to care for. One of those things is a home-cooked lasagne.
They say it takes a village to raise a family, and if we’re lucky then maybe we have family and friends close by to support us when we bring a new baby (or babies!) home, cope with serious illness or with any unforeseen circumstances in the family. But what if your village doesn’t live near you, or your village is busy, or your village desperately wants to get to you - but then COVID happened.
That’s where Bellyful steps in. Bellyful is a nationwide charity that supports young whānau who don’t have others around them to do what its volunteers do - cook and deliver free wholesome meals. Yes, and that includes lasagne. Yum!
Since 2009, Bellyful has provided 175,000 meals to 32,500 families. They have 25 branches across the country and each month volunteers of these branches gather to cook food for whānau in their communities.
Bellyful is one of the five charities to receive $5000 from our recent public poll, where we gave a total of $25,000 from our unredeemed gift cards. All up, that takes the funds they’ve received through The Good Registry to almost $10,000.
Bellyful General Manager Wendy Thompson says it is truly heartwarming to have had support from the community to receive the extra funding.
"The extra boost of money is huge for us and will go towards supporting the more than 650 volunteers who are at the heart of what we do. The rest of the money will go towards other essentials such as funding for our ingredients and containers, contributing towards the costs of updating our referral system, training, new cooking equipment or even our phone costs,” Wendy says.
If you want to refer yourself or a family to Bellyful or volunteer at one of the branches head to Bellyful’s website. If you have a special event coming up - maybe a birthday or baby shower - and you’d like to support Bellyful’s important mahi, you can easily do so by setting up a Good Registry.
- By Rachael Bhadury
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