How you can make a difference … this Christmas
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype and retail-mania that Christmas brings. Here’s how to connect with the true meaning of Christmas and help Tasmanians in need, next time you shop with us - warm glow guaranteed!
If you’ve looked at our online Christmas store recently, you’ll see an option you can take which will take you a few clicks and a few dollars, and give hope to those doing it tough this Christmas.
Hill Street is proud to partner with Loaves and Fishes, a not-for-profit organisation which gathers surplus food bound for landfill, transforms it into ready-to-eat meals and delivers it state-wide through more than 250 partner agencies such as St Vincent de Paul, the Salvos and Neighbourhood Houses Tasmania.
Loaves and Fishes also provides employment opportunities, training, work experience and other practical support for disadvantaged Tasmanians, and partners with School Food Matters to deliver approximately 6000 free hot school lunches per week to 30 Government schools across Tasmania through the School Lunch Project. Through partner agencies Loaves and Fishes feeds 15,000 Tasmanians each week and also supports more than 60 Tasmanian School Breakfast Programs.
Paul O’Rourke, Loaves and Fishes’ Community Partnership Manager for the past two years, has a long history in charitable work, including assisting children living in extreme poverty overseas, as well as working with the underprivileged and those doing it tough in our own communities.
Paul says that he works with Loaves and Fishes because it delivers food and hope to those in need.
Paul is concerned that in today’s economic environment, “one in two Tasmanians are having to make difficult choices about food in their daily lives, and this is only heightened at Christmas.”
“We are seeing many more Tasmanians needing help for the first time in their lives; many are two-income families who still can’t keep up with rising rent, mortgage, food, fuel and power costs. If we can help, we should,” he says.
Luckily helping is easy. Order online to secure your Christmas fare and make a generous donation to Loaves and Fishes by clicking the Community Christmas Donation button.
Additionally you can give a $4 gift through tap-and-go counter-top terminals in-store, or donate products in-store using the special holidays essentials boxes. Tap-and-go donations and holidays essentials donation boxes are currently in our Devonport store only, with plans to roll out tap-and-go donation points at all our stores in the lead-up to Christmas.
If donating food items at our Devonport store, or direct to the Loaves and Fishes Devonport warehouse in Don Road, their Glenorchy warehouse or the Hobart kitchen in the Grace Centre at 11 Ralph Terrace, Rokeby, we encourage you to donate foods with a long shelf life which don’t require refrigeration, such as pasta, rice, flour, cereal, biscuits, tea and coffee, condiments, sugar, hygiene items, spreads and long life milk.
Let’s help spread the happiness and hope of Christmas to all Tasmanians.
