Caversham Baptist Church’s basement transformed into a packing house for a grocery store as about half a dozen volunteers bustled around making Christmas hampers filled with essentials for those in need yesterday.
Associate pastor Sandra Gordon said there was an immense amount of need at this time of the year.
"There’s a lot of families that rely heavily on the breakfast club and the lunch-in-schools programme, so when it comes to six weeks of holidays, there’s not much left in the pantry."
The church worked with Carisbrook School principal Bruce James, who identified 46 families that needed the support over the Christmas break.
Some families from Corstorphine Kindergarten and the Corstorphine Community Hub also received the goods.
All of the essential goods — worth about $18,000 — were donated by a variety of groups around the Dunedin.
Mrs Gordon and her team of volunteers have been fundraising and preparing for the initiative since August.
They worked from 8am to 5pm organising the hampers yesterday and plan to distribute them tomorrow.
The Otago Community Trust donated $8000, which enabled the church to give a $50, $60 or $70 voucher to families depending on their size as they picked up their hampers as well.
Mrs Gordon said in the first year of the giveaways the church gave away Christmas hams, chickens and puddings, but then they realised families were actually more in need of essentials.
