We are invigorated following a wonderful Bellyful National Hui in Te Whanganui a Tara / Wellington.
The amount of energy and aroha in the room as we gathered volunteer leaders from across Aotearoa was special.
This year, one of the focuses was on ensuring our branch leaders feel supported and empowered in their roles. Taking care of ourselves so we have the energy we need to fill bellies was a major theme.
Our event was filled with incredible speakers who shared invaluable insights. Gemma McCaw inspired our volunteer leaders with her life story, the importance of family – and why caring for ourselves is so important so we can care for our communities.
Heidi Quinn from Volunteering New Zealand gave us a great overview of the current state of the volunteer sector and a look at best practice guidelines, Victoria Davy of Blind Low Vision NZ offered some amazing wellbeing tools, Christine Langdon from The Good Registry spoke about being the change and shared her own inspiring story while Liora Noy told us more about The Village NZ, which is all about bringing whānau together to learn and connect and build a more resilient society.
We were also treated to presentations from some of our amazing partners who spoke from the heart about what Bellyful means to them. Thank you to Kylie Wright from The Wright Family Foundation, Neil Marolia from Fidelity Life, Gavin Byford and Marty Brooky from Coherent Printing and Lisa Mills-Albert from Mills Albert Ltd.
We celebrated our remarkable volunteers with the 2024 Heart Awards, honouring their dedication to our mahi. It was extra special to be joined by our founder Jacqui Ritchie – and to be able to celebrate 15 years of filling bellies, which has only been possible thanks to her vision.
The kai and welcome at Loretta for our Heart Awards was unapparelled. Finding out the lovely owners were themselves recipients and wanted to pull out all the stops to make our evening magical, was the icing on the cake.
Hui thanks
A heartfelt thank you to our core Hui funder, Wright Family Foundation, for making this event possible, and to Kylie Wright who generously took time away from her whānau to speak and spend time with us.
Special thanks also to our friends at Fidelity Life, who kindly funded the amazing badges given out at the Heart Awards, along with funding some of our gorgeous Hui gifts.
We greatly appreciate our friends at Coherent Digital Printing who printed all our Heart Awards certificates free of charge, Naumi Hotels Wellington for being so accommodating, and all the businesses and organisations who contributed to our gift bags, freebie table and spot prizes:
Congratulations to our 2024 Bellyful Heart Awards winners
