Retired Rangiora farmer Ross McQueen has backed the City Mission for five decades.

Ross is one of our highly valued regular donors and has also put in decades of volunteer work, firstly as a driving force behind a youth centre project we ran in North Canterbury, and then also as one of our governance team.

Nearing 80 years, he’s still a member of the Trust Board which oversees the City Mission. In this year’s New Year Honours, Ross was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his community work including his service to us.

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Helping people who are sleeping out on the streets is one of our core jobs but by far most of the work we do through services such as social work, addiction counselling, day programmes, community hubs, and foodbank is with people who are housed.

Here is a glimpse at the daily life of thousands of Cantabrians who will be steeling themselves to get through another winter. Imagine this was your winter!

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This winter we are more worried than we have been for a long time about how people on the streets are going to cope. The number trying to get through the cold months without a house will be higher than ever and they will include many people who are not hardened to sleeping out. This is because of a variety of reasons, including a lack of accommodation, the Government’s tighter approach to emergency housing, rising under-employment and unemployment, and rising costs, especially power.

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Brian* woke up in hospital and he was alive. Very ill, but still alive. He’d tried to end his life a day or so ago when he couldn’t think of any reason to wake up in the morning.
He’d survived and now, lying in a hospital bed, he still didn’t know why he should be alive. Running through his mind were two choices: Option A was to have another go at not waking up, option B was “get out of this, try and change things around and be happy”.

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Brian is one of our clients and you can read his full story in A Second Chance At Life. Here he shares in his own words what it is like to be consumed by alcohol and then be able to turn away.

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We're thrilled to once again partner with New World Supermarkets for their incredible Family2Family Foodbank Appeal! 🛒🥫

From today, when you shop at New World Supermarkets, you can pick up a specially chosen Family2Family bag of essential food items, or create your own, and donate it to help support families in need right here in our Christchurch community.

Every bag donated helps keep our foodbank stocked in the lead-up to winter—a time when many families are facing real hardship. Together, we can make sure no one has to go without.

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As well as helping people in crisis, we also want to help them move towards independent lives. So we jumped at the chance when the opportunity came to run a Government-backed energy wellbeing service locally in 2024.

Our service has two parts to it. We offer the home energy assessment that Penny benefitted from, which can also lead to recommendations to use other City Mission services.

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When you come to our Barbadoes Street Central Op Shop, City Mission staff and volunteers welcome you with big smiles. You can buy your kids good clothes for $2 and shoes for $1. The relief of being able to do something good for your children makes you want to cry. This op shop is very important to the community because it provides people with what they need very cheaply or even for free if they have a voucher from our social workers.

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Our Learning Hub aims to positively impact on our clients by offering classic education approaches such as providing computers for self-study, supporting driver licence study and so on.

We offer classes that add interest, colour and value to clients’ lives. Our choir that performs in the Transitional Cathedral is a good example. It can be incredibly uplifting for clients to learn to sing together. They need to have commitment, learn relaxation and breathing techniques, and have to use literacy skills– which we help them with.

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In 2024, we expanded our Elder Care programmes by adding two new groups at Woodend-Pegasus and Temuka. We added another at South New Brighton in January 2025. They joined existing groups at Timaru, Aranui, Woolston, Opawa, Burwood, Avonside, Fendalton-Merivale, Burnside-Harewood and North New Brighton. The impact we aim for is increased happiness and fulfilment in the lives of our elderly guests’ and target those who need this support.

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Shopping for food instead of receiving a pre-packed parcel is more dignified and our clients responded eagerly to being helped in this way. That’s a personal impact that means so much to those who arrive feeling ashamed to ask for help and leave feeling happy that the community cares.

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Family support builds strength and resilience and helps people be able to manage better for themselves. We see families rebuild their bonds once we have cared for the member they lost.

Your impact in helping bring families back together again is making a wonderful difference to many lives in our community.

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Seeing a bundle of blankets on the ground with a human sleeping inside them outside her flash inner city apartment made it very clear to Sarah Chrisp why she needed to donate to the Christchurch City Mission. “You can easily live in a bubble if you choose to, and pretend it doesn’t exist, but in the central city you literally can’t. You can’t not see it. I looked outside my window, I saw all of this need, and I didn’t know what to do. I needed people that know what to do.

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Men’s day programme staff member Phil is asked what he gets out of the job after nearly 20 years at the Mission. To answer he points to a chair in the office where a former client was sitting just a little bit earlier that very morning

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What’s not to love about Christmas – all the family gathering to celebrate, a time for spiritual affirmation, presents for overexcited children, a table-laden feast, bubbly and - it’s a HOLIDAY. Christmas is the exciting end to the year.

Except … many in our community don’t celebrate Christmas and actually dread it. To them, the Christmas season is a drawn out, intense reminder that their lives, filled with problems such as anxiety, poverty, addiction and family upheaval are so different to others.

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Christ Church Cathedral will welcome group visits inside this Christmas – yes inside – where they will be greeted by the 10-metre steel City Mission Christmas Tree. The Twelve Days of Christmas event offers bookings for up to 50 visitors at a time on weekdays from December 3 - 18.

Christchurch City Missioner Corinne Haines said she was delighted that the City Mission tree had found such a worthy and historic home this Christmas.

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At Christmas we all have the opportunity to uplift those around us, whether it’s a helping hand, a small gift, an act of generosity which can brighten a life, or a time to remind people that they are loved, and that we care for them. This willingness to offer a helping hand is magnified enormously at the City Mission where – with your help – we will make Christmas better for thousands in our community.

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Four men are in the lounge of one of our transitional housing apartments to talk about how the City Mission has helped them.

Outside the windows people are coming and going from the foodbank and the café. Across Hereford Street at our other half of the complex, they are going to and from our main reception area to see counsellors, duty social workers, visit our education hub, medical unit, and day programme.

It’s a busy place of people helping and being helped. It’s what the City Mission is.

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We are 95 today and the five-year countdown begins to our big centenary celebration.

The Christchurch City Mission’s history is richly entwined with that of the city and we have shared the journey of ups and downs and growth that Christchurch has experienced over the same period.

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