Santa's Taranaki Helper Lisa's Cause For Kids

Taranaki Elf Co-ordinator For Shoebox Christmas Lisa Southall (34)

- Julie Jacobson

The idea is pretty simple really – it’s Christmas presents, wrapped in a shoebox, for kids who could do with a smile on Christmas Day. I got involved after a friend did a couple of boxes for the Wellington initiative, which Pera Barrett, a Porirua dad, started about five years ago. I thought it was such a cool idea I wanted to do it in our community.

My sister-in-law, Letitia, was keen as well, so we started a Facebook page outlining what we were doing and asking people to sign up to donate a gift box. Before we knew it, we had hundreds of people signed up. Our original goal was just to do one kindy!

That first year, 2016, we ended up doing shoeboxes for 1200 kids. We went to one of the school assemblies where they gave them out and it was amazing! The kids were so excited and pumped when they were given the gifts and we could see the teachers were really stoked for them too.

People who sign up can pick how many boxes they’d like to do and this year you could also request a certain age or gender.