A local family is providing essentials to the community.
Ana Autalaga and her daughters fill the stand near Howick Intermediate four times a week during lockdown with an array of food.
“I know it’s been very hard with people losing 20 per cent of their wages, which was their bread and butter and milk to some families,” Autalaga says.
“So it’s good to help out whenever we can.”
She buys 10k bags of potatoes, bags of apples, carrots, chips, jelly, rice and many other items. Autalaga divides them into bags and puts them up so “no one can take them all but share them out”.
Additionally, the family leaves bags of chips, fruit, cereals and cup noodles for the kids. “I have four and know how they’re in the cupboard all the time for food,” she says.
“Kids have to wait until their parents get paid to have food, it’s really hard.”
The food is usually gone within an hour.
“That tells us that there are people and families in our community who are doing it rough,” she says.
Autalaga says that most of their church members have not been able to work this lockdown. She and her husband, a church minister, have been buying things once a week for families and delivering them.
“We don’t have much as we’re struggling financially but if we could help one person out and a put a smile on their face it means the world to us,” Autalaga says.
