Kerre Woodham: Charity began with all of us

Richie McCaw was one of a number of All Blacks at the fundraiser. Photo / Gino Demeer

Earlier this week, I had the honour of hosting the Canterbury Relief dinner, put on by Sky City with the backing of the Prime Minister, John Key.

My co-host was Justin Marshall, former All Black and now rugby comments man, who was on debut as an MC. A fine job he made of it too.

Thanks to the support of so many corporate bidders and well-known New Zealanders across sport, media and the arts, $880,000 was raised - which SkyCity rounded up to a cool million.

It's extraordinary how generous Kiwis can be - from the businesspeople who paid $76,000 to have dinner with the Prime Minister to Greg Murphy, who flew in from Melbourne just to support the event, then went back again the next morning to prepare for Bathurst.

Mahe Drysdale hosted a table and drove back to Karapiro later that evening as he's building up for the World Rowing champs and the All Blacks were out in full force.

SkyCity shouldered all the costs of the event to ensure that every last cent raised would go to Cantabrians who are most in need and it was a wonderful reminder that, when the chips are down, we are a family of four million people.