Tararua Community Youth Services

Where possible we'll tell you a little about the person receiving the koha. If we can't, you can try asking on the community page (click the website button under my picture).Please don't include any second-hand items without checking with the organiser first 🙂

We know it can be tricky! But the good news is there's a whole community of awesome friends with amazing ideas. Ask in the Facebook group for ideas and someone will lend a hand (click the website button under my picture). You can also check out the Shoebox Christmas instgram page here for ideas by age/gender.

We know some of our gifters enjoyed being able to give an age/gender preference in the hope we could match their preference but it's a lot of extra work to build this functionality. If enough people request it, we'll build it in time for next year. (Use the feedback link at the bottom of the page).

A regular shoebox size is a good guideline but it doesn't have to be an actual shoebox - anything much bigger takes up a lot of space and is harder to find storage space. So please stick to the size guideline as best you can, and try to not make it bigger than this.

There's no hard and fast rule - aim for around $30 - $50 if you can. But the key is finding something they will love.

You sure can, just click Give more, or Give less below Your Koha.

Absolutely, when signing up you can select to take part as an individual, whānau, or other group. If you're a team of 20 or more please email me using the link under my picture so we can make the experience of giving as awesome as possible for you and the team. We're still working on how we can make taking part as a whānau as rewarding as possible. Letting us know if that's you is the first step :)

We want to keep the children as safe as we can, and asked our schools and community services what information they are happy sharing with our gifters. This is different for different services, but they know best how to keep our children safe. some are happy with initials, others with a reference number, and we're guided by them :)

You can absolutely include something with the child's name and a general message like Merry Christmas etc. but please don't make it any more personal than that, and please don't include your name. We need to make sure we're not opening up a communication channel between children and gifters which hasn't been OK'd by the school/service/whānau. Thanks for understanding!

Some schools ask that we keep unhealthy kai to a minimum - so please don't go overboard with that.Other than that of course please avoid anything dangerous. If you're unsure, feel free to ask in the Facebook group.