The Central Otago Resilience Trust came together out of a desire to help specific individuals struggling with medical-related costs, but has grown to an organisation that hopes to help many in the community, says trustee Glen Christiansen.

“Approximately two years ago, a group of us did a fundraiser for Jo McKenzie-McLean,” Glen said, “and then we raised money for another young woman.”

Jo, a Central Otago reporter who chronicled her battle against bowel cancer on the podcast, Jo v cancer, sadly lost her fight last month.

“We raised this money from a very generous Central Otago community and we just thought there was an opportunity to continue on, create a trust and continue to put this money back into Central Otago,” Glen said.

The original meeting consisted of Derek Craig (from Hunter Craig), Becky Ensor (from Checketts McKay), and Glen (who also manages The Gate, Cromwell). The result is the trust, which plans to fill in the gaps left by publicly funded healthcare, ACC payments, and other welfare assistance.

Rachael Buttar from ICL came aboard as accountant/treasurer, Emma O’Reilly from Checketts McKay took over social media and communications, and retired business expert John Cooper is putting in the structure to help the trust grow and be successful.

“It’s taken us 12-18 months to get the concept loosely formulated in our minds on how it goes. We are a trust who will be able to help with the smaller things in life that are essential, and sometimes difficult to achieve,” Glen said.

“We have put together a grants committee as part of the trust who will allocate the funds as they see fit, and they will convene when possible.”

The trust’s first fundraiser late last month at The Gate was attended by more than 100 people and raised just short of $30,000. The support does not have to be only financial, Glen said.

People have been in contact offering their skills, whether it be fixing a fence, providing a ride somewhere, or helping out in some other small but concrete way.

“We have a network now of skills to help us, which is just as important as cash.

“We chose to live in this paradise and we have a very supportive Central Otago community so we need to return that support wherever possible.”

The next fundraiser, on October 21 at Labour Weekend, is a six hour mountain bike race at the airport in Alexandra, and Glen said organisers had been overwhelmed by the support from the Central Otago District Council, the mountain bike community, and the airport.

The trust covers all of Central Otago, with representatives of the Maniototo, Alexandra, and Cromwell on the grants committee.

Donations can be made through the trust’s website and anyone with skills to offer can email via the website.

“We would love to see people from the regions come forward and say, ‘This is our skillset,’ out through the Maniototo, Roxburgh, all of those sorts of places,” Glen said. “That would be great.”