Working together to get children back to school is so important. Too many of our tamariki and mokopuna are not yet at school as more often than not, their families cannot afford back to school costs. 

Rising back to school costs are hurting our struggling and needy whānau. This is why this type of donation is so very much appreciated! Let us together help get our children back to school and give the education they both deserve and want!

The Catalytic Foundation started the EDU2022 campaign this year to help schools and families in desperate need of digital devices and school resources for their children to learn with. 

"Families are struggling to put food on the table, let alone provide stationery. Glen Taylor School are helping with providing meals for children so they can learn while at school" Johanna Wrack, Vice Principal, Glen Taylor School  

The following is a message we received from two boys whose family has been in transition due to domestic violence...

" Thank you so much we were struggling to get our school work completed on the school computer and have been held back without a devise. I just can't believe that we have one each and they are brand new. This is the best gift we have ever had. Things like this don't ever happen to us it's so incredible."

With the help of Rockwell Automation and generous individual donations, the Catalytic Foundation have distributed 80 backpacks filled with school items, including 25 stationery packs and 22 new Chromebooks for children to have at home and school. However, more Chromebooks are needed.

Thank you to our donors and businesses who have supported this campaign. If you can help please go to this link. 

 Donate to the EDU2022 campaign

The Catalytic Foundation would like to thank the team at Rockwell Automation for their donation and volunteering time putting together backpacks for our EDU2022 campaign, assisting children in need with resources to help with their education.

Each backpack contained necessary items for school including: Lunchboxes, drink bottles, pencil cases, pencils, rulers, glue sticks, erasers, and notebooks.

The backpacks were distributed to families in desperate need of these supplies via our schools and community charity network. These include:

• Glen Taylor Primary School
• Woven Earth - helping families affected by domestic violence
• Budgeting and Family Service - helping families in South Auckland (Tuakau, Otara and Manukau) 

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO EDU2022

Congratulations to Kerryn Thrupp, CEO of Woven Earth for the necessary work you do in the Auckland community.

As an acknowledgment of the charity and the important work they do setting up homes for families who have been affected by domestic violence, we presented Kerryn with this Accreditation Certificate from the Catalytic Foundation.

Woven Earth has met every criteria in the Catalytic Foundation charity accreditation checklist and we are very happy to endorse them as a very worthy charity to donate to, give resources to and volunteer with. 

"We furnish homes and in doing so we furnish lives. We help change the #thenwhat - one family at a time".  Kerry Thrupp, CEO at Woven Earth

Photo: Kerryn Thrupp in the Woven Earth Warehouse with the Catalytic Foundation Accreditation Certificate and backpacks we donated for families.

Donate before March 31st and get a third of the money back as tax credit from IRD.

With tax filing season coming up, many businesses will looking to finalize their plans for the end of the financial year. 

Corporate social responsibility is increasingly becoming a focus for businesses. This is encouraged by the New Zealand government with donations eligible for a 33.3% tax credit up to the amount of tax paid during the year.

We are thankful to all of our business, payday and campaign donors, which is why we are reminding you of this service by the IRD. It's great to give and even better when that giving has an added win-win benefit. 

If you'd like to claim your tax back, IRD provides two ways to file for a tax credit when you make a one-time donation or participate in regular payroll giving:

• Submit copies of your donation receipt electronically throughout the year to your myIR account and claim donation tax credits as part of your end of year income tax process.
• File tax credit claim form (IR526) for the relevant tax year from April of the following year.

The good news is that if you have missed filing tax credit forms for donations made in past years, the IRD allows you to go back up to four years, for tax years 2018 through 2021.

See more about tax credits for donations on the IRD website

Thanks again to our sponsors and we hope you will consider donating again this financial year or next. 

Through the generous giving from our online and company donors we were able to drive through the Auckland Covid border at 5am on the 15th December, to deliver 296 Christmas boxes to two very hard-working family support charities in Kaitaia.

The first stop was at Whare Timatatanga Hou Ora (Kaitaia Womens Refuge), where we were greeted by the team, ready to receive the carefully wrapped parcels for their whanau in need. The team told us that many families leave their homes in a hurry during a domestic violence situations, so they were not only thankful for the lovely gifts for each member of the family, but also the essential personal items included in the boxes.

Our second stop was to deliver Christmas boxes to Te Rarawa social services in the centre of Kaitaia, and we received the following feedback: 

Te Rarawa social services would like to take this opportunity to thank the Christmas Shoebox Appeal for the time and effort in gaining resources that our organisation could distribute to whanau in need during the Christmas period 2021. The gifts were welcomed by whanau and their children with excitement and helped relieve some of the financial stresses whanau faced during this time.  Below, I have attached some feedback received from families and workers who had the pleasure of delivering these shoeboxes.

Many, many thanks to the shoe box appeal organizers who tirelessly continue to give. The cause has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. Again, many thanks for helping make a positive difference for our whanau in our Community.

"Whanau were very thankful and appreciative in receiving the shoe box gifts".

"Very thankful as they were unable to financially provide for the children last year due to COVID.  The uncertainty of having enough provisions.  When the gifts were given the faces on the children lit up.  Many wanting to open them up and taking guess of what could be in them".

"My whanau were very grateful and appreciative receiving their shoe boxes, as some were in a really hard place going into the holidays".

"Receiving them gave a little bit of joy as seeing their babies open a present and the happiness it brought them started their holidays off on a good note".

"Spoke with caregiver today she was very appreciative of the boxes, she said it really helped for her moko to have presents" 

"All the whanau were amazed with the boxes they were gifted and how the gifts they received in the boxes were so on point for their children".

"I had a 14 year old boy who was very humbled by the gifts he got. He never expected anything and was so overwhelmed".

"Young girls were so excited being able to explore what was inside their gift boxes".

The Catalytic Foundation would like to thank the charities involved who provide such important family services in the Far North, our donors, and our volunteers including: Luana Smith who helped drive the Ute with our CEO Teresa Moore to Kaitaia and George Makene for the use of your vehicle.  Collectively we made a difference.

Photos: Unloading at Te Rarawa Social Services

When Cheyelle Robins-Reti contacted the Catalytic Foundation about supporting the Christmas Shoebox Appeal in Tauranga we were excited. Cheyelle was in France on tour at the time, so we put the wheels in motion to ensure we could make Christmas a happy time for rangatahi in Tauranga.

Through our contacts at the Acorn Foundation we were connected with Tanya Grimstone at Te Aranui Youth Trust. 

They were very thankful thankful for the Christmas boxes. Cheyelle also provided sports gear for the young people which was amazing.  They had a great party with their rangatahi and have also been able to spread the joy with the extra gifts being distributed by Police youth workers.

"We work with vulnerable youth in the Western Bay of Plenty between the ages of 7-14.  We also support and work with the Police Youth Development Team and the Police Family Harm Team so we were delighted to be able to support these organisations to get gifts to some of our youth". 

Thank you very much for considering us. Ngā mihi nui. Tanya Grimstone

 

Through the generous giving from our online donors and the staff at Spark, Xero, Dow, Hays Recruitment, Chubb Insurance, Rockwell Automation,  Richmond Chambers, Cambridge Clothing,  All things Plumbing, IMCD NZ Ltd, Kohler NZ, Russell Investments, Lion NZ Customer services team, Britomart Group, Cooper and Company, Lynch and Associates, Chorus, Dell Technologies, Reach Local NZ Ltd, Argosy Property Ltd, Kmart, TAS Health and the BNZ, we were able to support thirteen community services in the Waikato/Auckland region with the 2021 Christmas appeal.

The project would not have gone ahead without a drop off, pick up and volunteering centre, organised by Rockwell Automation in Mt Wellington. We would like to thank their team very much for their support, volunteers and the venue for the project. 

We delivered 1138 boxes of presents and essentials to families involved with English Language Partners (Waikato), Island Child Charitable Trust, North Shore Police, Woven Earth, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, HBC Grandparents Parenting Grandchildren, Love Soup, The Mums Clique, Budgeting and Family Support Services (Manukau, Otara, Tuakau), North Shore Women's Centre, De Paul House (Northcote and Rodney), Shine Women's Refuge and Rodney Hestia Women's Refuge.

"Thank you to the Catalytic team for making Christmas special for some of our most vulnerable families, who had been living with domestic violence. For many of our impacted families, Christmas was looking bleak with financial and emotional pressures adding further stress on top of their situation. We were overwhelmed by the love received from individuals and businesses who donated Christmas gifts to our clients and their children, as well as food - including special Christmas treats, which helped ensure they could have as much of joyful Christmas as possible". Carol Herbert, Relationship Specialist, Shine

“My daughter loves her new box….it really is the little things. I am more grateful than I can explain. Thank you”

Thanks to the generosity of our community, we were able to make Christmas special for children in our KIDshine programme. This meant our clients who were not in a position to purchase presents, were able to bring joy and hope to their children. Each gift included a card that read ‘This is a little gift from us to celebrate everything you have achieved this year’.

One mum said, “You’re right, it’s crazy how much we've done, we couldn’t have done it without you”.

Photos: Chubb Insurance volunteer filling boxes that were donated by Spark, Dow Chemicals team donated many generous gifts, delivering parcels to De Paul House in Northcote and below a delivery to North Shore Womens Centre

Through the generous giving from our online individual donors and the staff at Forsyth Barr, Mercy Hospital, Marsh Insurance, MTF Finance, Polson Higgs, Southern DHB, Kom Limited, Swain Woodham Group, Otago Polytechnic, Hays Recruitment, PKF Dunedin Ltd and Oamaru Playcentre, we were able to support five community charities in the Otago region with the 2021 Christmas appeal.

The project would not have gone ahead without a drop off, pick up and volunteering centre at the Dunedin Community House and we thank them for their help, volunteers and use of their venue for the project. 

We delivered 302 boxes of presents and essentials (double that of last year) to families involved with Corstorphine Community Hub, the Cancer Society (families in Dunedin and Invercargill), Stopping Violence Dunedin, Te Whare Pounamu Womens Refuge and Oamaru Pacific Island Community Group Inc.

"I had amazing feedback from a family that I gave boxes too. The young girl aged 11 thought that the box had been designed especially for her as it contained everything she is into and loves to do at the moment. The young boy who was 12 years old was super impressed as well which says a lot coming from a young boy!
Keep doing what you are doing as you did it so well and touched the lives of young people and their parents in a very special way at such a difficult time in their lives".
Ngā mihi, Jo Bremer, Supportive Care Invercargill, The Cancer Society of New Zealand 

"Thankyou again for the amazing work you do 😊"
Kind regards, Hana Hana Halalele, General Manager
Oamaru Pacific Island Community Group Inc

Thank you to everyone involved who volunteered and donated to make this possible.  

Photos: Volunteers at work at Forsyth Barr and Corstorphine Community Hub picking up boxes for their families

Through the generous giving from the teams at Cavell Leitch Lawyers, Pinnacle and Co, Grant Thornton, Hays Recruitment, Deloitte, Dell Technology, Spark, Chubb Insurance, Georgina Hemmings at Socially Speaking, Aman and daughter Myana and Belinda Foster, along with our individual online donors we were able to support four community charities in Christchurch, with the 2021 Christmas appeal.

The project would not have gone ahead without a drop off, pick up and volunteering centre. We would also like to thank the Christchurch Community House for their help, support and use of their venue for the project. 

We delivered 251 boxes of presents and essentials to single parent families through Birthright Canterbury, the womens refuge AVIVA, Grandparents raising Grandchildren and Bellyful (supporting families with newborns).

Thank you to everyone involved who volunteered and donated to make this possible. 

"The generous Shoe Box donations from various local companies and individuals meant that one parent families were less stressed thinking about Christmas. But more than the children getting presents on Christmas, the Shoe Box Project has ripple effects such as:

• Having some help with Christmas presents meant there was more food on the table for Christmas Day.
• For others, it was the chance to join in with a whānau barbeque and connect with relatives. When money is tight, one parent families do not attend because they are unable to bring some kai to share or simply no money for fuel/bus transport.
• Our families feel that they are not missing out compared to the two parent families.

We deeply appreciate the hard work and dedication of the staff, sponsors and donors of the Shoe Box Project".

Kind Regards, Rhodora Sagles, Manager - Birthright Canterbury Trust

 

"We love participating in this each year".

Greer Grenfell, Cavell Leitch Experience Coordinator, Christchurch

 

 

 

 

Through the generous giving from the teams at Spark, Deloitte, NZ Infrastructure Commission, Hays Recruitment, Xero, Dell and TAS Health, Chorus, along with our individual online donors we were able to support five community charities in the Wellington region with the 2021 Christmas appeal.

The project would not have gone ahead without a drop off, pick up and volunteering centre. We would also like to thank Wellington Helicopters and East by West Ferries for their help, support and use of their venues for the project. 

We delivered 245 boxes of presents and essentials to English Language partners (Porirua and Wellington branches), Bellyful, Heart Kids, Wellington Homeless Women's Trust and 

Kids Need Dadz. Thank you to everyone involved who volunteered and donated to make this possible.  

I would like to let you know that we have delivered  25 Catalytic Foundation  gift boxes to children. They were so happy and pleasantly surprised and their parents too. It was lots of happy faces and smiles.

My colleagues Sarka and Fleur who are our coordinators and I had a great fun as ‘Santines’. Thank you very much.

Zlata  Sosa | Manager
English Language Partners | Wellington Centre

On behalf of the recipients of the Christmas boxes, we would like to thank our donors and supporters in the Wellington region for supporting your community in need. 

Photos: 1 - Volunteers from Deloitte, 2 - Volunteers from Hays Recruitment, 3 - Wonderful family surprise, 4- Our parcels went out with wonderful home cooked meals from Bellyful