Four shipping containers packed with donated goods will head to cyclone-hit Fiji after a massive response to a Wellington lawyer’s appeal.
Kamil Lakshman, who moved to New Zealand from Fiji in 1983, had initially hoped to fill a single shipping container, but was amazed at the public’s overwhelming response.
“It was the media coverage that seemed to have tapped into a pulse about how people felt about Fiji and the devastation from the cyclone.”Three bulging-full containers were sent by rail on Tuesday to Tauranga, where they would get loaded on a ship heading to Fiji on March 12.
Lakshman said she was very grateful that so many organisations and people from all walks of life answered her call to help Fiji.
The fourth container would be filled during the week with educational goods bound for devastated schools, including school desks, as well as large medical supplies, such as hospital beds. It would depart New Zealand on March 25.
It was Laksham’s third humanitarian appeal for her former homeland. Her first was in 2009, when floods hit Fiji. She linked up with the Ramakrishna Mission, a non-government organisation in Fiji, which distributed the donated goods on arrival.
In 2012, she organised a second container of donated goods after another flood caused widespread damage.
