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Making masks to send to south Auckland. From left, Margaret Bayer, Sheryll Titford, Judith Williams and Jenny Schollum.
Women in Puhoi have rallied to a call by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Auckland to supply desperately needed face masks to struggling families in south Auckland and beyond.
Mahurangi Matters history columnist Jenny Schollum spotted the appeal on Facebook by Bishop Patrick Dunn, who was seeking support for the face mask initiative of south Auckland priest Father Martin Wu.
Jenny alerted former journalist Judith Williams, who publicised the need in her regular Puhoi newsletter.
Judith says she often travels to Samoa and is familiar with the culture and struggles of Pacific Islanders living in Auckland’s southern suburbs.
“Even before Covid, I was thinking about south Auckland and wondering if there was something we could do to help. This project was more or less handed to us on a plate,” she says.
Judith adds that people in the Puhoi parish have been feeling a bit low with church services shut down due to Covid. She saw the face mask project as a way to give local people something good to do and help cheer them up.
Mrs Schollum has turned out to be one of the top mask makers, churning out two dozen masks in two weeks.
The tricky part has been securing elastic due to heavy demand from other mask makers around the country. However, Judith says this was solved when a former Bendon employee offered a big roll of elastic had been sitting at home.
Meanwhile, Fr Martin Wu, of the St Joseph and St Joachim parish in Otahuhu, says he’s struggling to keep up with demand for masks.
Initially, he planned to supply only a few hundred masks to vulnerable families, but he kept getting repeat orders both in south Auckland and then from other Auckland suburbs.
So far, he has distributed around 10,000 masks and anticipates demand will remain high for the foreseeable future, so intends to keep the initiative running.
Fr Wu says some of the poverty of families living in his parish was brought home to him during earlier distributions of hand sanitiser and soap. Some families had no beds and one family had seven people crammed in one bedroom.
He says many of his mask makers are elderly and are sometimes tempted to feel they are no use to society any more.
“I have had so many of them say to me, you are giving some meaning to my life. That’s almost making me happier than receiving the masks,” he says.
Anyone wishing to help with the mask project should email Fr Wu, revmwu@gmail.com
