In 2024, we expanded our Elder Care programmes by adding two new groups at Woodend-Pegasus and Temuka. We added another at South New Brighton in January 2025. They joined existing groups at Timaru, Aranui, Woolston, Opawa, Burwood, Avonside, Fendalton-Merivale, Burnside-Harewood and North New Brighton. The impact we aim for is increased happiness and fulfilment in the lives of our elderly guests’ and target those who need this support.
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Shopping for food instead of receiving a pre-packed parcel is more dignified and our clients responded eagerly to being helped in this way. That’s a personal impact that means so much to those who arrive feeling ashamed to ask for help and leave feeling happy that the community cares.
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Family support builds strength and resilience and helps people be able to manage better for themselves. We see families rebuild their bonds once we have cared for the member they lost.
Your impact in helping bring families back together again is making a wonderful difference to many lives in our community.
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Seeing a bundle of blankets on the ground with a human sleeping inside them outside her flash inner city apartment made it very clear to Sarah Chrisp why she needed to donate to the Christchurch City Mission. “You can easily live in a bubble if you choose to, and pretend it doesn’t exist, but in the central city you literally can’t. You can’t not see it. I looked outside my window, I saw all of this need, and I didn’t know what to do. I needed people that know what to do.
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Men’s day programme staff member Phil is asked what he gets out of the job after nearly 20 years at the Mission. To answer he points to a chair in the office where a former client was sitting just a little bit earlier that very morning
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What’s not to love about Christmas – all the family gathering to celebrate, a time for spiritual affirmation, presents for overexcited children, a table-laden feast, bubbly and - it’s a HOLIDAY. Christmas is the exciting end to the year.
Except … many in our community don’t celebrate Christmas and actually dread it. To them, the Christmas season is a drawn out, intense reminder that their lives, filled with problems such as anxiety, poverty, addiction and family upheaval are so different to others.
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Christ Church Cathedral will welcome group visits inside this Christmas – yes inside – where they will be greeted by the 10-metre steel City Mission Christmas Tree. The Twelve Days of Christmas event offers bookings for up to 50 visitors at a time on weekdays from December 3 - 18.
Christchurch City Missioner Corinne Haines said she was delighted that the City Mission tree had found such a worthy and historic home this Christmas.
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At Christmas we all have the opportunity to uplift those around us, whether it’s a helping hand, a small gift, an act of generosity which can brighten a life, or a time to remind people that they are loved, and that we care for them. This willingness to offer a helping hand is magnified enormously at the City Mission where – with your help – we will make Christmas better for thousands in our community.
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Four men are in the lounge of one of our transitional housing apartments to talk about how the City Mission has helped them.
Outside the windows people are coming and going from the foodbank and the café. Across Hereford Street at our other half of the complex, they are going to and from our main reception area to see counsellors, duty social workers, visit our education hub, medical unit, and day programme.
It’s a busy place of people helping and being helped. It’s what the City Mission is.
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We are 95 today and the five-year countdown begins to our big centenary celebration.
The Christchurch City Mission’s history is richly entwined with that of the city and we have shared the journey of ups and downs and growth that Christchurch has experienced over the same period.
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Our team of three financial mentors work from rooms right alongside the shelves and trolleys of our self-serve foodbank. Because of the demand on our foodbank, we can only provide food parcels once every seven week - it is a crisis service to help people at particularly tough times.
But if we spot an individual or family coming to us every seven weeks, then that’s a flag, and we steer them to our financial mentors for a closer look at the situation.
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Last Christmas the Linwood Resource Centre was closed but Charlie Hulbert opened the Menz Shed anyway during the non-stat days. He sensed it was needed. He told the guys, no power tools, just hand tools, come along have a cuppa. And four men who were alone at home did.
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Most Thursday mornings you’ll find a tall, friendly 91-year-old woman with a gentle American accent hanging clothes on the racks of our inner-city Op Shop in Barbadoes Street. This is Carlie Jones and exactly when she began volunteering at the City Mission is lost in the mists of time. She can’t remember, but it must be well over 40 years.
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We were in the news a lot last week as Christchurch debated the problem of aggressive begging. Media wanted to know what we thought about the council’s plan to push on with looking into getting a bylaw to control the anti-social aspects of aggressive begging. It’s a complicated issue but we see a big difference between the people we help and support on the streets who are genuinely experiencing homelessness, and the aggressive, intimidating beggars, who are usually not homeless.
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Our Foodbank leader Kirsty is having to get used to appearing in the media. It’s not her first choice to go in front of cameras and interviewers but she does it because she believes in why the foodbank is so important. She wants to remove shame from asking for food and she wants supporters to know how much their donations help.
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Phil will never forget the night he arrived to work at the Mission and looked up and saw a sight that left him exhilarated and moved. Across the entrance to the men’s emergency night shelter was a beautiful whakairo which he had stored in safekeeping for more than a decade.
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Thursday is Judy Stewart’s day to volunteer at the City Mission Rangiora Op Shop – and get this - she has been turning up on Thursdays for five decades.
This extraordinary service to her community was highlighted yesterday (June 17) when she was presented with an outstanding achievement award by Christchurch Mayor Phil Mauger at the Canterbury Volunteer Recognition Awards.
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Winter makes everything harder when life is going against you.
No-one wants to live in poverty and debt, or to suffer from mental health and addiction issues, or to be without adequate housing, or to have to rely on the City Mission for regular food parcels.
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Compassion is a common ground for humans no matter what their religion, or colour, or culture … or anything, says Farid Ahmed.
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.Jan Spence left a magnificent legacy of work in the mental health and addiction area. Her impact on our AOD services have been truly amazing, and while, Jan being Jan, she would say it is all due to her staff, really her energy and vision is why our AOD expertise and caring approach is so highly regarded today.
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