From left: Pete Otto, Xiaoyu Yan and Rita Otto with food for the parcels. Photo / Andrew Warner
From left: Pete Otto, Xiaoyu Yan and Rita Otto with food for the parcels. Photo / Andrew Warner
Food parcels tailored to different cultural groups have been a welcome lifeline for a number of migrants and international students in Rotorua.
Multicultural Rotorua is supporting them with food parcels and putting them in touch with other support programmes.
Multicultural Rotorua president Margriet Theron said they had a new administrator,Leidy Monsalves from Chile, and for her first project Theron had asked her to call some of the members who were migrants and international students to introduce herself and ask how they were coping in the Covid-19 situation.
"She came back to me to say people don't have food."
Theron said many of the international students had been working in the likes of hospitality and lost their jobs, and some skilled migrants were having job struggles too.
Theron said they had also needed drivers, so she contacted the local police and within 22 minutes the acting commander of police had sent a message to Lakes District Health Board on Thursday, to say the drivers needed Covid-19 safety training so if they got stopped by police they would have the right paperwork.
"On Friday morning at 10am Lakes DHB did a Zoom training session for the drivers. We also decided we would support the small migrant shopkeepers by buying food from their shops for the parcel, such as Food Monster, the Western Heights FourSquare and the Asian Sari-sari Store in Hinemoa St.
"We wanted this project to be much more than food parcels. We want it to be linking people together, building our set of volunteers and building our cultural understanding."
Food ready to be packed and delivered as food parcels to Rotorua migrants and international students. Photo / Supplied
Theron said by Saturday Leidy had 50 parcels packed and delivered, and by yesterdayafternoon had 132 parcels delivered.
"We are getting really nice little emails to say, 'thank you so much we appreciate that'."
She said although the $5000 ran out pretty quickly, they have received donations, such as $1000 from Rotorua Rotary Club.
They are also using their events funding from the Rotorua Trust for the food parcels, as they cannot run their usual multicultural celebrations, she said.
Monsalves said the food parcels included fresh and dry food, such as rice, noodles, beans, flour, sugar, tea, spinach, carrot, onion, garlic, and curry paste and powder.
Her three sons had been a big help with preparing the food parcels for delivery, she said.
She said she was enjoying helping out the community and that it felt great.
"I'm a migrant, I came here as a student and I know what it is to struggle on your own in another country."
Sebastian MacDonald, 9, (left) and Lucas MacDonald, 8, help with getting the food parcels prepared. Photo / Supplied
The Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology student knew the reality for some students - "They have to work and study, and some have to send money to their own country."
Patrice Sabanel, from the Philippines, said she and her partner had found the food parcel a great help.
She said she arrived in New Zealand last January and has not got her working visa yet, and her partner was the only one with a job.
However, being a welder, the lockdown had put a strain on his work and he was earning less than usual.
"We are renting out a home and have bills to pay on top of food, so the help from the Multicultural Council with food parcels has been a really big help for us."
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She said there was a lot of food in the parcels and they had been rationing it, so there was more than two weeks of food.
Peter Richardson, head of international at Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology, said Toi Ohomai was proud to be working closely with local community groups to ensure that all its students had the support they needed during this time.
"We know that it is a particularly difficult time for many of our international students – many of whom are far away from their family and friends.
"It's heartening to see our valued community rally to support each other.
"A great example of this is the incredible support from the Rotorua Multicultural Council, who have provided much appreciated food parcels to migrants and some of our international students - we really are all in this together."
The Rotorua Salvation Army has also been distributing between 10 and 20 essential non-perishable food parcels a day.
