Emergency Relief Centre / Care Centre
(closed once the emergency phase was over)
Immediately after the Earthquake on February 22nd, Grace Vineyard set up a Welfare Centre at our Beach Campus in New Brighton. This Centre was quickly overwhelmed by the need, and together with other church teams, local volunteers and a large group from our own church we quickly started helping to provide vital supplies for locals. The East side of Christchurch is mainly lower socio-economic, consisting of various suburbs like New Brighton, Aranui, Wainoni, South Shore, North Shore, Parklands, Linwood, Avondale. This area has had many houses destroyed, and most streets have potholes, are extremely bumpy and still show evidence of liquefaction in places.
With encouragement from the local Police, and MP, Lianne Dalziel, we moved the Welfare Centre a few metres down the road from our Beach Campus, to the Roy Stokes Hall at 140 Seaview Rd, New Brighton (opp the Police Station).
This Hall was the major distribution centre for the East side of Christchurch until the supermarkets reopened, and was stocked with food, drinking water, clothes, sanitary needs, cleaning products, toiletries and candles.
Our Youth Alive Trust set up a daily Kids Programme in the local school grounds for the many kids who couldn't go to school. We are excited to think that working together as a large army, we can really make a difference in so many people's lives.
