We were amazed this year by the generosity of our school community and the amount of non-perishable items that we were able to collect during our annual Harvest Festival. As in previous years we have donated these items to the Christchurch City Mission, who are always very grateful to receive our help. This year our donated items filled up four pallets which will be used to make up food parcels for the many services the City Mission provides, supporting the homeless, those suffering from housing or food poverty or addiction. Last year the City Mission was able to support 62,000 people!

When we delivered the items to the City Mission, the City Missioner, Matthew Mark met with our Head of Chapel, Issy Stiles and our Head of Clan Leaders, Triny Cassidy, who had led the Harvest Festival collection at Rangi this year alongside our chaplain, Reverend Charissa Nicol. Matthew Mark expressed his gratitude on behalf of the City Mission for our generous donation. He told us that the Food Bank is only able to operate through donations such as ours and that 75% of their running costs come from the community. We were also lucky enough to be given a tour of the area where they package up all the items into food bags and were amazed to be told that this huge volume of goods would only last for two weeks! As an example at the moment they are going through 1200 tins of baked beans, spaghetti and vegetables every week. There is a huge demand on their services at the moment with the very cold weather we are having.

Thank you once again to all those families who supported our annual Harvest Festival.

Tania Morgan

Head of Global and Community Connections