Helping out with community needs is what the not-for-profit organisation ‘Good Neighbour’ is all about, from food rescue, teaching life skills to young people to street and backyard clean-ups.

Good Neighbour is an organisation that started 10 years ago to change the community by modelling how to help out our neighbours.

On Friday, March 15 at the Cargo Shed on The Strand, Good Neighbour celebrated their 10th anniversary with 160 guests in attendance.

After its founding, Good Neighbour attracted the attention of people who wanted to help and attracted some funding, says general manager Renee Hanna.

Performances at Good Neighbour's celebration of their 10th anniversary. Photo supplied.

“Good Neighbour started the journey 10 years ago with a focus on helping people who needed practical support such as cleaning up their backyard gardens, doing their lawns and street clean-ups.

“Before long we started to rescue food around the community and distributing it to those in need.

“All the other departments were added along the journey.”

Good Neighbour has massively grown over the years, “now there is a care junction offering wrap around support services, community gardens in Bethlehem, and a firewood depot which is out in Pyes Pa where we rescue logs from the port and have massive machinery to cut it all down and get it out to homes that would be cold otherwise – roughly about a hundred homes every winter.”

160 guests attended Good Neighbour's celebration of their 10th anniversary. Photo supplied.

Food rescue, kitchen and classes

Good Neighbour has a food rescue and a kitchen. “We turn rescued food into meals and the meals go out into the community for those in need.”

Renee says “sometimes giving people a box of ingredients poses difficulty as they’ve got major health issues. What they need are meals and so we are able to use the meals coming from our kitchen to support people in the way they need.”

“We also have an educational side to our kitchen where we bring in different groups that could do with lessons around how to eat nutritionally and how to cook.”

“When people are in crises, it’s just that extra love and care.”

Programs for youths and unemployed

“We also have a volunteer-to-employment program to help people get off benefits and into employment.

“We have a Life for Youth program where we are working with students who are struggling to stay engaged at school. Before they get to the point of leaving school and making damaging choices, we show them what it looks like to play a positive part in their community, develop necessary life skills, be a good role model for others, to recognise and believe in the potential within them, and how they can access career pathways that they never thought possible.”

“We recognise that not all childhoods are created equally. So we desire to provide them with some things that other people take for granted and give them a start to life that they would have missed out on otherwise.”

Equipment lending service

Renee says Good Neighbour has an equipment lending service where people can come and borrow lawnmowers and weed eaters.

“There are a lot of people in the community that are physically able, they just don’t have the access to the resource to be able to do it.”

Fruit picking

Renee says they also do fruit picking which is a great project for the community to prevent food wastage and provide fruit to homes that otherwise couldn’t have it.

“We have a massive spreadsheet of all the trees in the area that need picking at whatever time and we call them up and say “how’s your tree doing? Is it ready to pick?” and our team goes out and picks the fruit and brings it back.

“We have pallet load after pallet load of fruit that would’ve gone to complete waste and rot in our backyards”

“An odd 30 thousand kilograms of fruit a year that would’ve been rotting are instead making it into homes where they wouldn’t have been able to have fruit otherwise.”

Connecting resources with those in need

“A big part of Good Neighbour is being a connector of resources.

“For example we have people dropping off bikes, and because we have such a wide network of people we are walking alongside, we are able to give them to a family in need.

“We have the ability to connect the resource in our community to those that are in need.

“I would describe Good Neighbour like a river where resources are constantly coming in and then going out to the places in need; and sometimes within an hour.

“Something will turn up and within an hour someone will arrive with a need for that exact thing.

“It’s crazy how often that kind of thing happens here.

Volunteers

“We have 420 volunteers in our database and 360 of them are on a roster, so they are constantly active.

“For the others, we might say “hey we’ve got a volunteer opportunity for this” and they can sign up for it.

“We don’t need to advertise, it’s amazing.

“People love doing what they do here, and they invite their friends to come and do it with them.

“We have ‘get to know a good neighbour’ tours every month because we have that many people wanting to volunteer.

“The thing is though, we’ll never turn anyone away. We’ve always got stuff people can do here.

“The need is huge, so the more people that volunteer, the more need we can reach.

“We never have too much of anything, the need is always greater and we grow with the need and grow with the resources that come in.

Greatest achievement

“It would be hard to choose a greatest achievement, but one of them is that we have played a massive part in waste minimisation in the Bay of Plenty.

“The food rescue has been going for around 10 years and all that food would’ve been in our landfills.

“Our waste minimisation is significant and our ability to teach people sustainable living plays a big part of transforming our community.

Transforming the community

“I would say the thing that is dear to all of our hearts here is when we see people that have walked in through the doors in a crisis situation and as we walk alongside them over a period of time, we get to see their life transformed and their future completely changed because of being a part of this community and the support services we have been able to provide. “

“You just can’t top that.

“As much as I love all of the practical things that we do in our community, when you see a life truly changed you just can’t help but say that’s the best part of what we do.

A reason to get out of bed for

“One thing that we are able to do is provide opportunities for other people to become a Good Neighbour.

“That extends so much beyond what we do here, our impact goes so much further.

Renee says the great thing that they offer is a mind-set shift for people to go out and be a good neighbour for themselves and their communities.

“The impact that we are making is beyond our ability to measure.

“I love seeing the volunteers coming together from all backgrounds, in the same room packing food, or around a garden weeding… People have found a belonging here and a purpose to get out of bed for.”

“420 volunteers have found a purpose because of goodness.

Sponsorship

Renee says that in order to meet the growing need here in the Bay of Plenty, Good Neighbour needs sponsors.

“Everything we do is through gifts of the people.

“We rely solely on funding and sponsorship, whether it be from trusts or businesses, we rely on it.

“With the recession, the need is growing drastically in our community. We can grow with that need but we need more partners. We need the community to get behind us. Good Neighbour has opportunities for funding partnerships, corporate sponsorship and also for individuals to give on a regular basis whether it be $5 a month or $100 a week through their ‘friends of Good Neighbour program.”

Facts and figures

• 2-3 tonnes of food is currently being rescued every day and being distributed into homes and to people in need. That’s approximately 670 tonnes per year and equivalent of $6.4million worth of food that would have been wasted otherwise.
• We partner with 72 charities, keeping them stocked full of food so they can do the great mahi in our community.
• 31,000 meals in the last 12 months have been cooked out of our kitchen for the community, especially the elderly and other vulnerable people groups.
• Approximately 30,000kg of fruit is currently being picked per year from peoples’ trees in their backyard (fruit that would have rotted on the ground). This fruit is distributed through our food rescue distributions.
• 500m3 of firewood is delivered each year to warm up whanaus’ homes who would have been cold throughout winter otherwise.
• 42 garden beds producing 2,000 bunches of produce each year are going into the community. 
• 22,000 volunteer hours have been completed in the last 12 months allowing all this good mahi to happen.
• 160 practical projects have been completed such as landscaping backyards for people in need in the last 12 months.
• 50 students each year are going through our life skills program and having their life trajectory completely changed because of it.
• We are currently walking with 66 whanau helping them to change their future for good; Good Neighbour walks alongside each whanau, empowering positive changes for them and the generations to follow. We see people off benefits, into employment, learning practical life skills, budgeting support, finding emotional wellbeing, and getting connected into other support they need.