Q&A: Sarah Page, founder of the Kindness Collective

So, I started the Kindness Collective to make myself focus on something other than my own situation.

Initially it didn’t even have a name. It was just me emptying the cans out of my cupboards and donating them to a local women’s refuge. From the first moment I walked down a driveway and was met by the women there I had this big wave of what I know now was joy. It was such a challenging period of our lives, and I hadn’t been feeling that much. But I realised that when you focus on giving and helping other people it’s harder to get caught up in your own problems.

How has the Kindness Collective evolved?

After donating things myself, I went to my friends and family and suggested that they also start donating. 50 people quickly became 100. It continued to grow from there.

For the first seven years we operated as a behind-the-scenes community group. But then I thought ‘let’s go all in and see what I can do.’ In 2020 we became a charity. I left my career in 2021. We finally secured our first grant and now we have a large community hub and a food bank.

It has grown so fast. In our first year we gave 43 kids presents for Christmas. Last year it was 24,963.

Where does the Kindness Collective operate?

We’re now a national organisation and we support 130,000 people every year who are living in poverty or hardship of any kind. We have 287 community partners – working alongside Police, Starship, Oranga Tamariki and other social services who refer the families in their community who are most in need.

It’s getting really big, but we’re still a small team – there are only 16 staff. Working alongside these community partners means that we can have some real impact. 

Tell us about the different programmes you run.

We have our Everyday Essentials that people get referred to us for. For this, we pack food items, winter warmers, toiletries, whatever people need to survive. Then we have other programmes where we help kids thrive. We have educational programmes, we work with LEGO on the Kindness Cup, and we have the PJ Project which provides over 25,000 kids with warm winter jamies. We have our Christmas gifts programme, we build school gardens, we do all these different things. We’re a bit unique in that we don’t have one single cause or focus, we just do all that we can to help families who are living in poverty.

Have you noticed an increasing need over the years?

100%. Every day feels busier and people’s stories in their referrals are getting more desperate. We’re seeing an increase in the number of people who were doing ok a few years ago but now are not. We used to be supporting people who were living in real poverty, but that has shifted. Now we’re seeing people who, a couple of years ago could make ends meet, but now they’re facing those impossible decisions like ‘do I feed my family this week or do I go to the doctor.’ Our everyday essentials programme is up 133% on this time last year. The PJ project is up 12%, Christmas is up more than 20%. Everything is up.

We’d love to not have to expand! But we respond to community need. It’s not like we go out there with targets hoping to achieve more each year, it’s kind of the opposite. Any other business would be stoked to be up 133%, but for us it’s sad.

How does your donation system work?

We run a couple of public-facing campaigns to generate donations, like the PJ Project and Christmas, and we’re always looking for support for food boxes. We’re lucky to have some great national partnerships. We are the national charity partner for The Warehouse and Mitre 10; we are LEGO’s Australasian charity partner. Partners like Foodstuffs and Tegel will donate financially to help us keep the lights on, but they also donate goods in kind, so we can give a chicken meal to each family every week.

But we never have enough, we can never get enough. Donations are down significantly over the last year. The need is increasing but there are fewer donations. We can only work with what we’ve got. It makes it hard to plan or to forecast anything.

If people want to help, what can they do?

Go to our website kindness.org.nz and have a look at all the things that we’re doing in your local area. But it doesn’t have to be us! What I want people to take away is that it’s important to find something that resonates with you; find something that you believe in. If its animals, go and help at your local animal shelter or set up a $10 payment to the SPCA each month. Whatever it is, get out into your community and see what needs some help.

It’s incredible the hope that it can provide for people and the community connection we have built. There is something so positive about that. I believe that one day we’ll be in a place where everyone has what they need – we have enough food and housing in this country for everyone. In the meantime, we just focus on the kindness of the community rather than the need.  We have so many really kind people in this country.