Charity comes full circle with Japha award

Adriana Avendano Christie and Gabriel Acuna-Caruajal at work in their pallet furniture factory which employs refugees. Photo / Dean Purcell

A young Colombian couple have started a social enterprise with disadvantaged New Zealanders as a way to thank this country for two Kiwi missionaries who devoted their lives to Colombia.

Kiwis Lindsay and Denise Christie went to Colombia in the 1960s and eventually founded a charity called Conviventia, which now works throughout Latin America to empower marginalised communities.

Fifty years later, their grand-daughter Adriana Avendano Christie, 24, and her partner Gabriel Acuna-Caruajal, 30, have started a social enterprise called The Pallet Kingdom which is giving work to refugees in Auckland making furniture out of used warehouse pallets.

This week, they beat 63 other applicants to win the Auckland Communities Foundation's first $1000 "Japha award", which the foundation plans to award each month to a project with social and environmental benefits. Japha, or "just another philanthropic Aucklander," is a play on "Jafa", an abusive term that meant "just another f***ing Aucklander".

Ms Christie grew up in Colombia but returned to the land of her grandparents in 2007 after a group from the Abundant Life Church in Kaitaia went on a mission trip to work with Conviventia. They invited her to return as an exchange student, so she spent her last year of high school in the Far North. "I didn't realise Kaitaia was so far away, so it was a bit of a shock. I'm a city girl," she said.

Later, she opened a shop in Auckland selling craftwork made by indigenous people in Colombia, but then decided to take another path.

"Instead of helping indigenous people in South America, we thought, why not help people here in New Zealand establish a business?"

She and Mr Acuna-Caruajal started a small website design and consulting business, Gwamu, which has created websites and helped with marketing for micro-enterprises.

Two months ago, they began the pallet furniture business to recycle pallets which would otherwise have gone to landfill. A Colombian carpenter, who fled his homeland after his son was killed by gangsters, is now a partner, and a Burmese cabinetmaker will join them soon.

They are already working on their next project, with Auckland's homeless people, and Mr Acuna-Caruajal said it was their way of saying thank you to Ms Christie's grandparents.

www.thepalletkingdom.com