COVID CRISIS APPEAL: Belong Aotearoa

It's a scary time. COVID-19 (Coronavirus) is taking over our lives - our news feeds, conversations, shops, events and more. I've been following closely what's happening in NZ but also overseas. Just like many others, I have both family and friends in countries where the outbreak is much larger and to be honest, it's been really distressing.

As easy as it is to panic, I know that we are all in this together. In particular, we at Belong Aotearoa are making sure our communities know that even as the world physically isolates, that we are still here. But we need your help to make sure we are.

Keeping on top of our health and well-being practices, we've also taken some steps to ensure that we take care of staff, volunteers and communities. We've reduced our in-office staff and volunteers with a roster for some to work from home. We've postponed many of our events and workshops and are reworking our community outreach projects to ensure we are still connecting with our communities, because we cannot afford not to.

Our communities are already isolated, often not having the social support networks many of us turn to in times of trouble. They often have little to no English language skills making access to NZ's latest COVID-19 updates almost impossible making it even easier to panic. Lack of access to services and systems already leaves them vulnerable with many lacking the resources (e.g. financial, technology) to fall back on when things get tough. Our projects help address it but changing them to suit this new climate of physical distancing, needs your help.

We know times are hard but I wouldn't be asking if this was not a crisis. Please donate and help us as we change our projects to remain accessible to our communities. Some of these changes will include more online support, at-home activity kits and providing resources to access this e.g. internet data. Just like any of our work we are working alongside our community, to make sure we tailor our at-home support to their needs.

With your help we can ensure that even as countries and people, distance themselves, that we are all still connected and feel we belong.

Thank you for your time and together, let's get through this.

Nāku noa, nā,

Rochana Sheward

CEO

Belong Aotearoa