An Alofa Basket is gift given as a gesture of kindness and we felt that's what some of our families needed during lock down. We know our community can find asking for help embarrassing.

Using social media, we asked people to privately nominate families that were experiencing hardship and could do with some kindness. Doing this through private message maintained dignity for our families involved. We also got the opportunity to share what we were doing with John Pulu on Pacific Media Network.

In total, we were able to support 50 households with supermarket vouchers to the value of $100. We knew that with this, they would be able to purchase what they needed to benefit everyone in the household. We heard from a lot of families that were struggling due to jobs being lost and pressures of having a full house. One household had 11 people staying there and like all of the families we supported, were very thankful for the support.

We would like to thank TOA Pacific who we were able to partner with to support to our older community members. We are also would like to thank the Ministry of Social Development for their support of this initiative.