October 20, 2024 • 22 mins
Campbell Hill is the co-founder and Community Impact Manager of Good Neighbour, one of the Bay of Plenty's most prolific and impactful community organizations.
With the help of over 300 dedicated volunteers, Good Neighbour addresses critical needs in the community through a variety of initiatives. Their food rescue program diverts 580 tonnes of food from landfills annually, delivering it to homes in need. They provide practical assistance, such as property maintenance, to individuals facing crises without a support network. They also rescue logs from the port, processing them into 500m³ of firewood each year for households in need. In addition, their community kitchen produced 26,000 meals last year to support those struggling with food insecurity.
Good Neighbour goes beyond basic aid by offering social support that addresses the underlying issues families face, helping them build resilience, well-being, and a sense of purpose. The organization also runs youth life skills programs, supports individuals on their journey to employment, maintains community gardens, and gathers surplus backyard fruit—36,000kg last year alone—distributing it to those in need.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from news talk S ed B.
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Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real life with John Cowen
on News talk Z ed B.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Gooday, I'm John cown and this is real life. And
you may not have heard of my guest tonight, even
though there's a good reason why you should hear about him,
because he's doing a fantastic amount of good workdown in Toronga.
And I think the reason you haven't heard about him
is because he'd probably run a mile from too much attention.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Welcome Campbell Hill.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Hello, good evening, John.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Good of you to join us now, Campbell, you hit
up a huge operation in the Bay of Plenty, a
charity that changes the lives of hundreds of people. Tell
us about Good Neighbor.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah, Good Neighbor. Yeah. I'm just one of the team
as there at the moment down Good Neighbor. But we
began probably in about twenty twelve. I was working for
another organization the city and just felt like I wanted
to do more in the community. So I began to,
you know, ask some questions, and then I decided that
(01:16):
I was going to take a couple of mates of mine,
and we were going to go and visit India, of
all places. And so we because when you want to
do something, you know, in the community, community work, I
wanted to kind of not just see what people did,
but catch the heart of of why people were doing
what they were doing. So we thought India was a
(01:37):
great place to go. We had some people over there
that we wanted to visit, and so we began that journey.
So we ended up in leprosy missions, We ended up
in the orphanage orphanages. We ended up over in cold
Cutter with a friend of mine who was who was
running Freeset at the time, and and then we ended
up right up in the pol And right in Nepal.
(01:58):
It was a little nGy out there. They were going
into the slums and their organization was called armald Chilopina.
That is really bad Nepalese. Please forgive me if that
that's not it is, But the translation of that actually
meant good neighbor, and so that's what we kind of
got the name. And then we came back to Torron
and we thought to selves, you know, where do we
(02:19):
start here?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
What do we do?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
And so that was the beginning of the journey of
good neighbor in our city.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, Now, the things that you saw in India, the
working I know free Set works with people that were
in the sex trade, and that you visited orphanages and
you visited leprosy colonies and things. I wouldn't have thought
those would be the type of needs that you'd be
meeting in to Raga. So you must have seen other
(02:45):
needs in your society.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, so that was yeah. So when we came back, Yeah,
we asked the question just where other needs in our community.
They must be needs in our community, but kind of
where do we start? And so what I just began
to do was was just literally walk my streets, get
out of the car, start walking the streets. In a
friend of mine, I used to just walk up and
(03:09):
down the streets and we used to talk about, Hey,
if we're going to make an impact in the city,
where do we start, what do we do? And so
that's kind of what we're looking at doing. And so
very early on in this process was I was out
on on a small job and my wife rang me
(03:30):
and said, we've just been broken into for the second
time in ten days. And I thought to myself, Wow,
we're trying to find ways to break into the community,
your out there community, and we're getting broken into ourselves.
What's this all about?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And so.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
We ended up in a family group conference and.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They obviously caught the guy that was doing it this.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yes, yes, they did. Yeah, they caught the two of
them actually, and we ended up at a family group conference.
And at that family group conference, there was lots of
you know, arguing and so on, and I just put
my hand up in the middle and said, I'm not
too sure what the answer is this for these young guys,
but I need to mentor them and everyone. You can't
mentor him, you're a victim. And I said, well, that
(04:15):
was my son. Somebody needs the mentor. And I'm putting
my hand up and believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
A young guy, A young guy.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah, he was just seventeen. Yeah, And so yeah, I
got fifty hours with this young guy. And it's got
a long story short. You know, eventually came to my.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Place heed with embarrassment, the idea of I've broken into
his place, stolen stuff, and now I have to go
and spend fifty hours working with this guy.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah, yeah, I know. So it was. It was one
of those things I couldn't get him. I couldn't actually
get him to come. That was a that was the
longest short of it. And it wasn't. It wasn't until
I was driving home one day and I thought myself,
you know what, I'm really looking forward to dinner, and
the voice came straight to me, yes, but your friend isn't.
And I stopped the car and I thought, what am
(05:03):
I going to do? And the thought can we go
back to Bethley and Baptist There was a church there,
get a food parcel and take it around to the
family at seven o'clock, And so that's what I did,
went it around there. My heart's beating. Now, I've never
been to his place, and so we pulled up into
the driveway, I hopped out and he was standing on
the steps and his mum was standing on the lawn
and as I got out, I heard them arguing about
(05:25):
no food being in the house. Now, as you can imagine,
that was a bit of a like whoa, this is
an opportune moment, and so I called them over and
his mom hugged me and we ended up taking the
food back into the house again and as we're in
the kitchen, I opened the doors to put the food
and then realized there wasn't even a salt and pepper
in the house, and knew it. It was just their pantry.
(05:46):
They just went backwards and forwards, because you don't put
food in the house otherwise people eat it and then
you don't have enough. And so at that time, the
young fellow has had his hands in his head and
he was looking down, and I said, bro, just forget
about the fifty hours. Why don't we just do one
hour and wy don't we just do it tomorrow and
start tomorrow. And that's what happened. He came around to
my place in a shirt that he had stolen from me,
(06:08):
So there he was. We began to you know, invited men.
We had a meal, and then he him and I
began to pay the sense. And I got honored this
young guy because he came back. As you said, it
was probably embarrassing cross cultural, and he unfolded. He said,
I know why they're you know, people are young. People
are running up and down my streets. I know this
(06:30):
and that, and and so we eventually organized the family
a street barbecue together and then he went on and
the courts took them on. I didn't get to fifty
hours out of them, going to be about fifteen. But
he kind of opened up the community to me and thought,
hey man, there were heaps of needs in my community.
I've just got to open my eyes a little bit
(06:50):
and see and respond in some way to the needs.
And so that's how we kind of began, and my
eyes kind of opened a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, right now, that was a sort of like a
rescue operation. I'm going to sort of jump ahead here
and talk about another rescue, and that is that.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Food shops have a problem.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
They could they could never sell the last muffin. If
a food shop's open till five o'clock and they've only
got one thing left in their cabinet, they're never going
to sell it. So they have to be fully stopped
right to the end of closing time, which means when
they close at the end of the day, their fresh
food just goes on the skip out the back. And
you had a rescue in mind.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah. So yeah, So we we had a trust at
the time and have Ben a good John and Jackie
Paine and and the rest of the trust. We heard
about Ki Wash and Wellington. They were they were pioneering
this food rescue idea of reaching a rescuing food that
had still had a lot of a bit of shop
(07:52):
life and it bit of time in it. And why
couldn't we rescue that food and then distribute it out
again to people in need?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So ye, yeah, so getting that underway, there must be
a lot of logistics and doing a food rescue operation.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Oh, there is, there is. There's a lot of logistics.
And we had to do a feasibility study, we had
to raise money, and we had to do all kinds
of things to you know, to get this underway. And
thankfully we am the lady Lavina Good who also joined us.
Her husband owns Brookfield New World Okay, Brendon, and so
(08:29):
it was a kind of a neat way of getting
into the back door and we began to set up
the systems and all of that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And we've got.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
About two minutes until we go to the ads, and
so why don't we just lay it out there? What
what does this trust that's been going there for ten years?
What's it doing now? How many how many volunteers for instance,
do you have?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Right? So we've had probably over a couple of hundred volunteers.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And how much food do you rescue.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
We're rescuing something like two and a half tons a day, two.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And a half tons of food a day, and it
goes out to other charities, Like like what charities?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, so I got sixty eight different charities that come
in anything from kindergartens to all kinds of different food
banks of all shots and sizes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
If you've just tuned in my guest tonight as Cam Hill,
and you heard about how you know you've got to
be very very careful about people breaking into your house
because if they break into your house, you might end
up having to run a huge charity that's delivering tons
and tons of foods out to various organizations. I'm going
to talk to Cam about some of the other things
about his motivations, why but why he does what he does,
(09:42):
and also some of the other things like community gardens
and kitchens and other things that this trust is doing.
This is real life on Newstalks EDB. I'm talking to
Campbell Hill. Be back with him and with you in
just a minute.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on Newstalk EDB.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Can talking with
Cam Hill from the Good Neighbor Trust down in Torona,
and he's picked that song for us. What have you
got there for us?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Oh, We've I've got to get my mojo working, Okay. Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Is that a time and play song or something that
gets your heart pumping or.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh I just love I love that kind of style
of music, blues, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
And I just I just kind of like when I
heard that song, I thought, yeah, that's good. That's you know,
if you want to get something done, you've got to
get your mojo on and get onto it.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So this is getting things done. You know.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I've been written up on what you've been doing, and
I watched a few videos on YouTube and things like this,
and there's sparks flying off you. I'm wondering whether it's
the sort of the builder in you. I mean, builders
aren't scared of big projects. And I wonder if if
you reckon that's part of your psychology that you can
just see the end from the beginning and you've got
to get it done.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah. I guess one of my motivations is I'm a
visionary and a bit of an activator, so I don't
have to have all the bits and pieces to make
a decision. So I like starting things, like getting things going.
And so the key I guess for me was surrounding
myself with good people and that was that that was
(11:16):
really the key to moving this forward and getting that
and getting that off the ground. So yeah, but I
guess I was in a stage of my life where,
you know, I really wanted to kind of make a
difference legal legacy, bring some you know, some hope into
the city, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Didn't really know what it looked like. It was kind
of very muddy or very you know, unclear, but as
(11:39):
we worked through it, it's certainly sort of shaped up.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I think most Christians, most Kiwis are good hearted and generous, yes,
but I genuinely think they don't know what the needs
are that are out there. You've got these eyes that
you see these needs. And I read that your Pearans
were missionaries up in Fiji, and so I wonder if
you got that, you got their eyes you can see
the needs that are out there.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah, well, that was one of the things early on
that I began to recognize that often we would go
through life with blinkers on and we don't actually see
or stop long enough to see what the needs are.
And if we just began to do that and then
and then another two things have some intentionality and a
little bit of courage to really make that kind of
(12:25):
a difference. And so as I've sought to, you know,
start this charity and start this work in the community,
that's what we've kind of done. If we can make it,
you know, happen, then let's do it. And so we
began to kind of do all kinds of things. So
for example, you know, when I was living in my
streets among the mob lived two doors up from me,
just moved in and I thought to myself, after six weeks,
(12:47):
this is no good. We haven't welcomed into the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And I thought.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
My wife said, you can't welcome to the neighborhood. And
I said, we are going to work into the neighborhood.
So I asked her to boat me a cake, and
I went and caught a trout and smoked it up,
took it up to them, knocked on the door and
got a reasonable response, a bit of a gruff response.
And anyway, The next day, as I stood at my driveway,
car went past and they waved out to me, and
(13:13):
I thought myself, you know what, I can't change what
they do or what they stand for or any of
that kind of stuff, but I can change the climate
in my street. And that really made a huge difference,
just that act of sort of kindness. If you know
what I'm saying, you.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Don't have to go overseas to get into these cross
cultural contexts, and it takes courage because people are different,
and so, yeah, this is something I was wondering about
your volunteers. You've got these hundreds of volunteers delivering food
and other types of aid to people that are quite
(13:48):
probably in different cultural contexts. And do you have to
train your volunteers to be, you know, to be I
don't know what you have to train them to do
to be to be good in that context. I guess
humble and understanding. I don't know, But do you have
to train your volunteers?
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah? Yeah, Obviously a lot of times when we go
out and help people, we're quite judgmental in ourselves. Why
isn't this person helping themselves? Are they just lazy? Why
can't they pull themselves up by the bootlacers, you know,
all of that kind of stuff, you know, and so
we've got to go in with kind of quite different eyes,
quite different spirit, quite different posture. And so we've got
(14:27):
to say to our volunteers, hey, here, we're just here
to serve. This is this person's starting point, and we're
going to go in and build trust, build some support,
and then we able to kind of walk alongside them
so that they can actually you know, stand on their
own to feed again. And so that is that does
take a little bit of educating, and we've worked really
hard to try and develop a cultural serving, a you know,
(14:51):
a servant attitude and sort of thing to them to
access them. And so I hopefully when volunteers come we
call it getting good neighbored. You know, you come down
and you're with us for a moment, and then they start,
you know, producing the same sort of stuff and realizes
what we would love to see. And so we've up
(15:13):
and said, you know, you know, be the change you
want to see.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Okay, now, with missionary parents like you had, I'm assuming
that you're a Christian, but not every Christian gets involved
in this type of work. What is it that you
believe about your faith or about God that motivates you
to do this work with less advantaged people.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Sure, one of the things that really challenged me early
on was, as you say, being brought up in church
circles for a long time, and I really wanted to
kind of like to this to be an expression of
what I believed, and so that I really feel that
the message the church should be bringing to our community
(15:58):
really is around service, and it is around the needy,
and it is about going to the least of these.
I look at it like a carpet and with a
carpet phrase. You know, there's all these threads, and so
it's kind of our role to go to where things
are breaking down and to weave back in. Now we're
(16:19):
weaving back in our time, our energy, and resources, and
that's what I believe we're called to do as well
as you know, love God, love people, love your neighbor.
You know, that's the big thing, and you can't separate that,
And so I just wanted to kind of emphasize that
or bring that back in to focus again because often
the social side of things is sometimes lacking.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Okay, now you're putting food into the cupboards of people. Well, actually,
you're putting food into the larders of these other charities
that are helping people. What are some of the other
things that good neighbor is doing with the people that
in need and pay plenty.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Sure sure, yeah. So we have a fireward depot. Yeah,
they've got five cubic meters of firewood up there. They've
got a team that put that together, and so come
winter time we have the ability to give out I
would or to sell fire with at a reasonable rate,
connect to warm people's homes. We've got a commercial kitchen.
(17:16):
Weent to twenty six thousand meals of that kitchen last year,
and that we also take boys from the boys college
up here and told on it and they come down
and they learn some kitchen skills, learn some floating skills,
learn some life skills. Just on Friday, all of them
got their forkliff licenses and many of them go on
to get jobs. If you walk around baith here today,
(17:39):
you'll see a guy called Henry and he's the security
guard out there, and he came from our kitchen, and
you know, lots of lots of success stories like that.
A lot of the boys come and you see their
heads lift up. You see their confidence build, and it's
just through that connection with us as and all the
other volunteers encouraging them and filling them with some hope
(18:03):
and good role models.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I've heard you do garden too.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yes, we've got gardens. The gardens over the years has
evolved and so we have a growth for good. So
all the garden food gets grown through a group of
volunteers and then gets put into our pataka kai. Sometimes
it's brought down the food rescue, but it's lovely that
we kind of grow food and friendship at the same time.
That's the key there. And we have so many people
(18:28):
who come and just enjoy the gardens, joy people, and
then we're able to kind of like wrap around other
support into that space as well. So we have a
social we call it the I'm just out of the
Social Center Fano Monarchy Center, and that's where we're able
to walk alongside people for the journey because we've discovered
(18:51):
that people can make it, but they just need some support.
And often we hear people say I can make them,
I can take the next step, I can I can
start moving forward because I know good neighbors got my back.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yep, I hear.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I mean I grew up in an orchard and we
had sometimes people from the community that would come in
and take our fruit. I don't know if they actually
approved of that all that much, but you actually encourage
people to go into a people's neighbors, into people's backyards
and take their fruit.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Yeah, that's right. We have we have people dropping Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, I know we used to do it too. Yeah,
but I believe it or not. Our fruit picking team,
it's just a small team d something like thirty six
ton of fruit that's just in people's backyards and we're
only scratching the surface, and that's.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
The owner's permission, the owner's.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Permission and that kind of stuff. But we have all
kinds of people really wanting to kind of, you get involved,
whatever their passion might be with its fruit or with
a guy called Bob and he wanted to grow pumpkins
in his backyard. I said gone, and Bob anyway, good
for a couple of years. Came back to me and says, listen,
this is getting difficult now bringing pumpkins into the food rescue.
(20:08):
I saw a flyer flyer and countdown because I'm a businessman.
I rang them up and I said to them, hey, listen,
I can see I can buy them for two dollars each,
but can I have them for a dollar please? And
I'm going to take them down to good neighbor. He
got three hundred pumpkins from good Neighbor and rang me
and said can he pick them up and support these pumpkins?
And I never forget when Bob came down and we
(20:29):
waded all the pumpkins out. You had a big smile
on his face and he called out to me, can
guess what and he says, what, Bob, He says, this
gives me purpose. Yeah, And I think that was a real,
real telling story that you know, people you know, wanted
to support, want to help, wanted you know, and good
neighbors can be that vehicle for them to express that.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And so yeah, now, obviously you're putting a lot of
grins and onto people's faces, the people that are being helped.
But it's one of the secrets of life, isn't it
there that the people that are getting in they're doing
this voluntary, doing this helping. Yeah, you know, growing the
stuff and everything like that. That are the ones that
are also getting helped out. I bet that you're ticking
(21:08):
a lot of boxes in their lives.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Oh look, we you know, a good neighbor of a community.
That's what it's developed into. And people come down and
volunteer and end up walking around the mount together, going
out for meals together, you know, doing social stuff together.
They just want to come down where people just come
down and we have a lunch you know, put on
by the kitchen every single day.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
And you could do have more volunteers.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, well I mean we volunteers, yes, yes, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The good news is too that there's places and organizations
a little bit like what you're doing all over the
country is kai bosh Down and Wellington and Kiros and
christ Church and Kiwi Harvest and lots of different organizations.
I think this is a wonderful part of our Kiwi life. Now,
good on you, Cam for what you're doing. And I
wish you're all the best for the future. And you've
(22:02):
picked another song for us to listen to as we're
going out, Yes.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
I did, yeah, And it's a it's written by so
called Evan Craft and it's called good Neighbor. And I
thought it was written for us actually, but it wasn't.
It's written by a Spanish boy and we've we've adjusted
the words and we sing it. A good neighbor before
are volunteers, so we'll pretend it's.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
For you as we're listening to it. Camp Campbell Hill
from Torong. It's been great talking with you.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
This is real life.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm John Cown and I'm looking forward to being with
you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
For more from News Talks ed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to a podcast from news talk S ed B.
Follow this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio,
Real Conversation, Real Connection, It's Real life with John Cowen
on News talk Z ed B.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Gooday, I'm John cown and this is real life. And
you may not have heard of my guest tonight, even
though there's a good reason why you should hear about him,
because he's doing a fantastic amount of good workdown in Toronga.
And I think the reason you haven't heard about him
is because he'd probably run a mile from too much attention.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Welcome Campbell Hill.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Hello, good evening, John.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Good of you to join us now, Campbell, you hit
up a huge operation in the Bay of Plenty, a
charity that changes the lives of hundreds of people. Tell
us about Good Neighbor.
Speaker 4 (00:55):
Yeah, Good Neighbor. Yeah. I'm just one of the team
as there at the moment down Good Neighbor. But we
began probably in about twenty twelve. I was working for
another organization the city and just felt like I wanted
to do more in the community. So I began to,
you know, ask some questions, and then I decided that
(01:16):
I was going to take a couple of mates of mine,
and we were going to go and visit India, of
all places. And so we because when you want to
do something, you know, in the community, community work, I
wanted to kind of not just see what people did,
but catch the heart of of why people were doing
what they were doing. So we thought India was a
(01:37):
great place to go. We had some people over there
that we wanted to visit, and so we began that journey.
So we ended up in leprosy missions, We ended up
in the orphanage orphanages. We ended up over in cold
Cutter with a friend of mine who was who was
running Freeset at the time, and and then we ended
up right up in the pol And right in Nepal.
(01:58):
It was a little nGy out there. They were going
into the slums and their organization was called armald Chilopina.
That is really bad Nepalese. Please forgive me if that
that's not it is, But the translation of that actually
meant good neighbor, and so that's what we kind of
got the name. And then we came back to Torron
and we thought to selves, you know, where do we
(02:19):
start here?
Speaker 3 (02:19):
What do we do?
Speaker 4 (02:21):
And so that was the beginning of the journey of
good neighbor in our city.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Okay, Now, the things that you saw in India, the
working I know free Set works with people that were
in the sex trade, and that you visited orphanages and
you visited leprosy colonies and things. I wouldn't have thought
those would be the type of needs that you'd be
meeting in to Raga. So you must have seen other
(02:45):
needs in your society.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
Yeah, so that was yeah. So when we came back, Yeah,
we asked the question just where other needs in our community.
They must be needs in our community, but kind of
where do we start? And so what I just began
to do was was just literally walk my streets, get
out of the car, start walking the streets. In a
friend of mine, I used to just walk up and
(03:09):
down the streets and we used to talk about, Hey,
if we're going to make an impact in the city,
where do we start, what do we do? And so
that's kind of what we're looking at doing. And so
very early on in this process was I was out
on on a small job and my wife rang me
(03:30):
and said, we've just been broken into for the second
time in ten days. And I thought to myself, Wow,
we're trying to find ways to break into the community,
your out there community, and we're getting broken into ourselves.
What's this all about?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
And so.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
We ended up in a family group conference and.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
They obviously caught the guy that was doing it this.
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yes, yes, they did. Yeah, they caught the two of
them actually, and we ended up at a family group conference.
And at that family group conference, there was lots of
you know, arguing and so on, and I just put
my hand up in the middle and said, I'm not
too sure what the answer is this for these young guys,
but I need to mentor them and everyone. You can't
mentor him, you're a victim. And I said, well, that
(04:15):
was my son. Somebody needs the mentor. And I'm putting
my hand up and believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
A young guy, A young guy.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Yeah, he was just seventeen. Yeah, And so yeah, I
got fifty hours with this young guy. And it's got
a long story short. You know, eventually came to my.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Place heed with embarrassment, the idea of I've broken into
his place, stolen stuff, and now I have to go
and spend fifty hours working with this guy.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
Yeah, yeah, I know. So it was. It was one
of those things I couldn't get him. I couldn't actually
get him to come. That was a that was the
longest short of it. And it wasn't. It wasn't until
I was driving home one day and I thought myself,
you know what, I'm really looking forward to dinner, and
the voice came straight to me, yes, but your friend isn't.
And I stopped the car and I thought, what am
(05:03):
I going to do? And the thought can we go
back to Bethley and Baptist There was a church there,
get a food parcel and take it around to the
family at seven o'clock, And so that's what I did,
went it around there. My heart's beating. Now, I've never
been to his place, and so we pulled up into
the driveway, I hopped out and he was standing on
the steps and his mum was standing on the lawn
and as I got out, I heard them arguing about
(05:25):
no food being in the house. Now, as you can imagine,
that was a bit of a like whoa, this is
an opportune moment, and so I called them over and
his mom hugged me and we ended up taking the
food back into the house again and as we're in
the kitchen, I opened the doors to put the food
and then realized there wasn't even a salt and pepper
in the house, and knew it. It was just their pantry.
(05:46):
They just went backwards and forwards, because you don't put
food in the house otherwise people eat it and then
you don't have enough. And so at that time, the
young fellow has had his hands in his head and
he was looking down, and I said, bro, just forget
about the fifty hours. Why don't we just do one
hour and wy don't we just do it tomorrow and
start tomorrow. And that's what happened. He came around to
my place in a shirt that he had stolen from me,
(06:08):
So there he was. We began to you know, invited men.
We had a meal, and then he him and I
began to pay the sense. And I got honored this
young guy because he came back. As you said, it
was probably embarrassing cross cultural, and he unfolded. He said,
I know why they're you know, people are young. People
are running up and down my streets. I know this
(06:30):
and that, and and so we eventually organized the family
a street barbecue together and then he went on and
the courts took them on. I didn't get to fifty
hours out of them, going to be about fifteen. But
he kind of opened up the community to me and thought,
hey man, there were heaps of needs in my community.
I've just got to open my eyes a little bit
(06:50):
and see and respond in some way to the needs.
And so that's how we kind of began, and my
eyes kind of opened a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, right now, that was a sort of like a
rescue operation. I'm going to sort of jump ahead here
and talk about another rescue, and that is that.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Food shops have a problem.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
They could they could never sell the last muffin. If
a food shop's open till five o'clock and they've only
got one thing left in their cabinet, they're never going
to sell it. So they have to be fully stopped
right to the end of closing time, which means when
they close at the end of the day, their fresh
food just goes on the skip out the back. And
you had a rescue in mind.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Yeah. So yeah, So we we had a trust at
the time and have Ben a good John and Jackie
Paine and and the rest of the trust. We heard
about Ki Wash and Wellington. They were they were pioneering
this food rescue idea of reaching a rescuing food that
had still had a lot of a bit of shop
(07:52):
life and it bit of time in it. And why
couldn't we rescue that food and then distribute it out
again to people in need?
Speaker 3 (07:58):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:59):
So ye, yeah, so getting that underway, there must be
a lot of logistics and doing a food rescue operation.
Speaker 4 (08:06):
Oh, there is, there is. There's a lot of logistics.
And we had to do a feasibility study, we had
to raise money, and we had to do all kinds
of things to you know, to get this underway. And
thankfully we am the lady Lavina Good who also joined us.
Her husband owns Brookfield New World Okay, Brendon, and so
(08:29):
it was a kind of a neat way of getting
into the back door and we began to set up
the systems and all of that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
And we've got.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
About two minutes until we go to the ads, and
so why don't we just lay it out there? What
what does this trust that's been going there for ten years?
What's it doing now? How many how many volunteers for instance,
do you have?
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Right? So we've had probably over a couple of hundred volunteers.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
And how much food do you rescue.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
We're rescuing something like two and a half tons a day, two.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
And a half tons of food a day, and it
goes out to other charities, Like like what charities?
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Yeah, so I got sixty eight different charities that come
in anything from kindergartens to all kinds of different food
banks of all shots and sizes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
If you've just tuned in my guest tonight as Cam Hill,
and you heard about how you know you've got to
be very very careful about people breaking into your house
because if they break into your house, you might end
up having to run a huge charity that's delivering tons
and tons of foods out to various organizations. I'm going
to talk to Cam about some of the other things
about his motivations, why but why he does what he does,
(09:42):
and also some of the other things like community gardens
and kitchens and other things that this trust is doing.
This is real life on Newstalks EDB. I'm talking to
Campbell Hill. Be back with him and with you in
just a minute.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life on Newstalk EDB.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Welcome back to real life. I'm John Can talking with
Cam Hill from the Good Neighbor Trust down in Torona,
and he's picked that song for us. What have you
got there for us?
Speaker 4 (10:10):
Oh, We've I've got to get my mojo working, Okay. Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Is that a time and play song or something that
gets your heart pumping or.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh I just love I love that kind of style
of music, blues, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (10:22):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
And I just I just kind of like when I
heard that song, I thought, yeah, that's good. That's you know,
if you want to get something done, you've got to
get your mojo on and get onto it.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
So this is getting things done. You know.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I've been written up on what you've been doing, and
I watched a few videos on YouTube and things like this,
and there's sparks flying off you. I'm wondering whether it's
the sort of the builder in you. I mean, builders
aren't scared of big projects. And I wonder if if
you reckon that's part of your psychology that you can
just see the end from the beginning and you've got
to get it done.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah. I guess one of my motivations is I'm a
visionary and a bit of an activator, so I don't
have to have all the bits and pieces to make
a decision. So I like starting things, like getting things going.
And so the key I guess for me was surrounding
myself with good people and that was that that was
(11:16):
really the key to moving this forward and getting that
and getting that off the ground. So yeah, but I
guess I was in a stage of my life where,
you know, I really wanted to kind of make a
difference legal legacy, bring some you know, some hope into
the city, you know, all of that kind of stuff.
Didn't really know what it looked like. It was kind
of very muddy or very you know, unclear, but as
(11:39):
we worked through it, it's certainly sort of shaped up.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I think most Christians, most Kiwis are good hearted and generous, yes,
but I genuinely think they don't know what the needs
are that are out there. You've got these eyes that
you see these needs. And I read that your Pearans
were missionaries up in Fiji, and so I wonder if
you got that, you got their eyes you can see
the needs that are out there.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Yeah, well, that was one of the things early on
that I began to recognize that often we would go
through life with blinkers on and we don't actually see
or stop long enough to see what the needs are.
And if we just began to do that and then
and then another two things have some intentionality and a
little bit of courage to really make that kind of
(12:25):
a difference. And so as I've sought to, you know,
start this charity and start this work in the community,
that's what we've kind of done. If we can make it,
you know, happen, then let's do it. And so we
began to kind of do all kinds of things. So
for example, you know, when I was living in my
streets among the mob lived two doors up from me,
just moved in and I thought to myself, after six weeks,
(12:47):
this is no good. We haven't welcomed into the neighborhood.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
And I thought.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
My wife said, you can't welcome to the neighborhood. And
I said, we are going to work into the neighborhood.
So I asked her to boat me a cake, and
I went and caught a trout and smoked it up,
took it up to them, knocked on the door and
got a reasonable response, a bit of a gruff response.
And anyway, The next day, as I stood at my driveway,
car went past and they waved out to me, and
(13:13):
I thought myself, you know what, I can't change what
they do or what they stand for or any of
that kind of stuff, but I can change the climate
in my street. And that really made a huge difference,
just that act of sort of kindness. If you know
what I'm saying, you.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Don't have to go overseas to get into these cross
cultural contexts, and it takes courage because people are different,
and so, yeah, this is something I was wondering about
your volunteers. You've got these hundreds of volunteers delivering food
and other types of aid to people that are quite
(13:48):
probably in different cultural contexts. And do you have to
train your volunteers to be, you know, to be I
don't know what you have to train them to do
to be to be good in that context. I guess
humble and understanding. I don't know, But do you have
to train your volunteers?
Speaker 4 (14:06):
Yeah? Yeah, Obviously a lot of times when we go
out and help people, we're quite judgmental in ourselves. Why
isn't this person helping themselves? Are they just lazy? Why
can't they pull themselves up by the bootlacers, you know,
all of that kind of stuff, you know, and so
we've got to go in with kind of quite different eyes,
quite different spirit, quite different posture. And so we've got
(14:27):
to say to our volunteers, hey, here, we're just here
to serve. This is this person's starting point, and we're
going to go in and build trust, build some support,
and then we able to kind of walk alongside them
so that they can actually you know, stand on their
own to feed again. And so that is that does
take a little bit of educating, and we've worked really
hard to try and develop a cultural serving, a you know,
(14:51):
a servant attitude and sort of thing to them to
access them. And so I hopefully when volunteers come we
call it getting good neighbored. You know, you come down
and you're with us for a moment, and then they start,
you know, producing the same sort of stuff and realizes
what we would love to see. And so we've up
(15:13):
and said, you know, you know, be the change you
want to see.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Okay, now, with missionary parents like you had, I'm assuming
that you're a Christian, but not every Christian gets involved
in this type of work. What is it that you
believe about your faith or about God that motivates you
to do this work with less advantaged people.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Sure, one of the things that really challenged me early
on was, as you say, being brought up in church
circles for a long time, and I really wanted to
kind of like to this to be an expression of
what I believed, and so that I really feel that
the message the church should be bringing to our community
(15:58):
really is around service, and it is around the needy,
and it is about going to the least of these.
I look at it like a carpet and with a
carpet phrase. You know, there's all these threads, and so
it's kind of our role to go to where things
are breaking down and to weave back in. Now we're
(16:19):
weaving back in our time, our energy, and resources, and
that's what I believe we're called to do as well
as you know, love God, love people, love your neighbor.
You know, that's the big thing, and you can't separate that,
And so I just wanted to kind of emphasize that
or bring that back in to focus again because often
the social side of things is sometimes lacking.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Okay, now you're putting food into the cupboards of people. Well, actually,
you're putting food into the larders of these other charities
that are helping people. What are some of the other
things that good neighbor is doing with the people that
in need and pay plenty.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
Sure sure, yeah. So we have a fireward depot. Yeah,
they've got five cubic meters of firewood up there. They've
got a team that put that together, and so come
winter time we have the ability to give out I
would or to sell fire with at a reasonable rate,
connect to warm people's homes. We've got a commercial kitchen.
(17:16):
Weent to twenty six thousand meals of that kitchen last year,
and that we also take boys from the boys college
up here and told on it and they come down
and they learn some kitchen skills, learn some floating skills,
learn some life skills. Just on Friday, all of them
got their forkliff licenses and many of them go on
to get jobs. If you walk around baith here today,
(17:39):
you'll see a guy called Henry and he's the security
guard out there, and he came from our kitchen, and
you know, lots of lots of success stories like that.
A lot of the boys come and you see their
heads lift up. You see their confidence build, and it's
just through that connection with us as and all the
other volunteers encouraging them and filling them with some hope
(18:03):
and good role models.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
I've heard you do garden too.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yes, we've got gardens. The gardens over the years has
evolved and so we have a growth for good. So
all the garden food gets grown through a group of
volunteers and then gets put into our pataka kai. Sometimes
it's brought down the food rescue, but it's lovely that
we kind of grow food and friendship at the same time.
That's the key there. And we have so many people
(18:28):
who come and just enjoy the gardens, joy people, and
then we're able to kind of like wrap around other
support into that space as well. So we have a
social we call it the I'm just out of the
Social Center Fano Monarchy Center, and that's where we're able
to walk alongside people for the journey because we've discovered
(18:51):
that people can make it, but they just need some support.
And often we hear people say I can make them,
I can take the next step, I can I can
start moving forward because I know good neighbors got my back.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Yep, I hear.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
I mean I grew up in an orchard and we
had sometimes people from the community that would come in
and take our fruit. I don't know if they actually
approved of that all that much, but you actually encourage
people to go into a people's neighbors, into people's backyards
and take their fruit.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Yeah, that's right. We have we have people dropping Yeah,
that's right. Yeah, I know we used to do it too. Yeah,
but I believe it or not. Our fruit picking team,
it's just a small team d something like thirty six
ton of fruit that's just in people's backyards and we're
only scratching the surface, and that's.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
The owner's permission, the owner's.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Permission and that kind of stuff. But we have all
kinds of people really wanting to kind of, you get involved,
whatever their passion might be with its fruit or with
a guy called Bob and he wanted to grow pumpkins
in his backyard. I said gone, and Bob anyway, good
for a couple of years. Came back to me and says, listen,
this is getting difficult now bringing pumpkins into the food rescue.
(20:08):
I saw a flyer flyer and countdown because I'm a businessman.
I rang them up and I said to them, hey, listen,
I can see I can buy them for two dollars each,
but can I have them for a dollar please? And
I'm going to take them down to good neighbor. He
got three hundred pumpkins from good Neighbor and rang me
and said can he pick them up and support these pumpkins?
And I never forget when Bob came down and we
(20:29):
waded all the pumpkins out. You had a big smile
on his face and he called out to me, can
guess what and he says, what, Bob, He says, this
gives me purpose. Yeah, And I think that was a real,
real telling story that you know, people you know, wanted
to support, want to help, wanted you know, and good
neighbors can be that vehicle for them to express that.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
And so yeah, now, obviously you're putting a lot of
grins and onto people's faces, the people that are being helped.
But it's one of the secrets of life, isn't it
there that the people that are getting in they're doing
this voluntary, doing this helping. Yeah, you know, growing the
stuff and everything like that. That are the ones that
are also getting helped out. I bet that you're ticking
(21:08):
a lot of boxes in their lives.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
Oh look, we you know, a good neighbor of a community.
That's what it's developed into. And people come down and
volunteer and end up walking around the mount together, going
out for meals together, you know, doing social stuff together.
They just want to come down where people just come
down and we have a lunch you know, put on
by the kitchen every single day.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
And you could do have more volunteers.
Speaker 4 (21:33):
Yeah, well I mean we volunteers, yes, yes, yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
The good news is too that there's places and organizations
a little bit like what you're doing all over the
country is kai bosh Down and Wellington and Kiros and
christ Church and Kiwi Harvest and lots of different organizations.
I think this is a wonderful part of our Kiwi life. Now,
good on you, Cam for what you're doing. And I
wish you're all the best for the future. And you've
(22:02):
picked another song for us to listen to as we're
going out, Yes.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
I did, yeah, And it's a it's written by so
called Evan Craft and it's called good Neighbor. And I
thought it was written for us actually, but it wasn't.
It's written by a Spanish boy and we've we've adjusted
the words and we sing it. A good neighbor before
are volunteers, so we'll pretend it's.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
For you as we're listening to it. Camp Campbell Hill
from Torong. It's been great talking with you.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
This is real life.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I'm John Cown and I'm looking forward to being with
you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
For more from News Talks ed B, listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcast on iHeartRadio
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