Parenting when you’re struggling can be bloody hard – and finding fuel in your own tank to fuel your kids’ can be even harder. Lee-Anne Duncan meets a Lower Hutt mum who’s thankful for Bellyful.

It’s five o’clock – better known to all parents as “the witching hour”, among other epithets.

Thinking about cooking something relatively healthy that your kids will even eat, especially when you’re struggling physically, mentally, financially, can feel like running a marathon with the buggy’s brakes locked, being forced to smile all the way.

“This time last year I just couldn’t have imagined myself sitting here a year later, being happy,” says Maurethe Little, a Lower Hutt mum to two energetic boys.

To be fair, there wasn’t much to be happy about. Her relationship with her young sons’ father had broken down, she was ill with two reoccurring autoimmune conditions, and her depression had returned.

Originally from Ireland, she had no family living close. Life was hard and she lacked support.

She posted her distress on a Meals for Mums Facebook page, and a former Bellyful Branch Coordinator saw her post and suggested she refer herself to Bellyful Hutt Valley for help.

Bellyful cooks and delivers meals to families with newborn babies and families with young children who are struggling with illness. That includes mental illness, such as postnatal depression and anxiety. The organisation has 18 branches throughout the country, fuelled by over 450 volunteers who cook, pack and deliver meals.

Bellyful had helped Maurethe’s family before, delivering meals when her second son Kian was three months old. “There are only 15 months between Kian and Patrick, my eldest. I knew having a baby and a toddler would be hard, but I had no idea!

“I was a bit anxious about asking for help that first time. I always think there are other people more deserving, you know? And I was a bit worried the woman from Bellyful who came to see me would be judging me. But she was really lovely and friendly, and we just chatted.”

When she found herself struggling again, Maurethe wasn’t sure she still fitted the criteria because Kian was three and a half years old and her eldest was nearly five.

“Maurethe most certainly met our criteria,” says Charlotte Delahunty, Bellyful’s chief executive. “She was dealing with two autoimmune disease as well as depression. She was alone with two active little boys and had to keep working on top of all that. That’s an awful lot to deal with so Bellyful was only too happy to help out.”

A trained nurse, Maurethe’s work included two 12-hour night shifts and two-day shifts on Healthline, answering questions from concerned callers. While she could do that from home, it’s far from easy trying to work with the boys around, even at night.

“The boys wouldn’t sleep in their own beds and Kian had to have someone sleeping beside him. So I’d get the boys to sleep then start working, but Kian would wake up and be banging the door down. I was so sleep deprived and really struggling.”

So having someone from Bellyful turn up to pop a few meals – family faves such as macaroni cheese and spaghetti bolognese – in the freezer meant a lot. “At that stage I couldn’t afford much food. There are a lot of nights I would just eat a bowl of cereal. Knowing the boys were fed was enough.

“It was amazing knowing I had something ready to go that the boys would eat and was good for them. It really took the pressure off, especially as I’d be trying to get two boys fed, washed and into bed, having either worked all day or was about to start that night.

“With my illnesses and depression there certainly were times where I didn’t think I’d make it through the day. You might think dinner doesn’t mean much but when you know there’s something you can just take out of the freezer, defrost, and it’s ready to eat? That makes a wonderful difference.”

A year on, Maurethe has the energy to make a difference for others. She supports Bellyful fundraisers and gets stuck in at Bellyful’s cookathons (where 100 or so meals are cooked and frozen) and bake sales.

“I’ve always been one to volunteer and I really like the idea of families helping families. I love being able to support others the way I was supported through Bellyful.

“Also, through Bellyful I’ve found another group of friends. It’s so wonderful that I now have all these friends I can call on for help, and others I can offer my help to.”

Like so many organisations aimed at helping people who are struggling, especially parents, Bellyful relies on donations and volunteers. Anyone who’d like to cook, pack and deliver meals can email Bellyful or fill in the Help Fill Bellies form at www.bellyful.org.nz.

You can also choose Bellyful as your charity of choice when you donate through the One Percent Collective.

And if you need help and would love a few things for your freezer, or know someone else who would, please go to the Bellyful website.

Lee-Anne Duncan is a freelance writer with a background in radio and television. While much of her time is spent as a hired pen, she loves telling the stories of charities, NGOs and social enterprises as they have so many great stories waiting to be told.

This content is entirely funded by Flick, New Zealand’s fairest power deal. In the past year, their customers saved $320 on average, which pays for a cheeky bottle of wine in the trolley almost every shop. Please support us by switching to them right now!

In the third story in a series celebrating the amazing things young New Zealanders do every day, a young girl’s love of soap – and owls – has become a business success story. Angela Cuming spoke to Ava Heath-Williams about her soap start-up. 

At the tender age of eight, Ava Heath-Williams can already add businesswoman and philanthropist to her growing list of achievements. Ava is the boss girl of Dancing Owl Soaps, the handmade soap business she runs out of her family home in Rolleston, near Christchurch.

It was Ava’s love for owls, and a library card, that prompted the idea for her business

”I got a soap-making book out of the library,” Ava says. ”It was pretty easy and fun to make. You can create anything you can imagine. There are tonnes of cool videos on YouTube showing you how to make different things.”

Ava’s love of soap-making soon caught the attention of her family. ”I got so addicted to making soap that it was taking over our house,” she says. ”Even Grandma didn’t want any more for presents! Mum also said I had to start paying for any more ingredients myself as it was getting a bit expensive.”

In mid-2017 she used the $30 she had in the bank to launch her business. And Dancing Owl Soaps was born.

”My first stall at the Rolleston Market made $120. It was epic for a 7-year-old!”

From the stall she’s grown the business to selling online via her website and Facebook page. You can find her soap at Beyond the Faerie Tree in Rangiora, and she provides a bespoke soap service for birthdays and baby showers.

The name Dancing Owl Soaps? It came from Ava’s love for Harry Potter. ”I have a soft toy Hedwig, and lots of other owl toys that I like to pretend are my pets. I imagine them dancing and hooting as I work so the name for my soap shop seemed obvious,” she explains.

Ava uses her business as a platform for her environmental work, with profits going to support the Oxford Bird Rescue. Every month Ava donates part of her revenue to the Canterbury facility, which rehabilitates owls and offers a sanctuary for other injured and abandoned wild birds.

”Tracey and Scott at Oxford Raptor Rescue run a rehabilitation centre for little owls. ‘They don’t get paid and need money to pay for bird food, vet bills and owl houses. Dancing Owl Soaps runs different promotions to raise money for them. At the moment, every time someone buys a sweet pea scented owl, I donate $1 to Oxford Raptor Rescue,” says Ava.

Away from her sweet-smelling business world Ava is an ordinary Kiwi kid, albeit one doing amazing things. She has a younger brother Matthew (”he’s cheeky”) and she goes to the local primary school, although she says she’d rather not. ”My dream is to be home schooled because real school keeps getting in the way of my business, and they make me do PE,” she says.

”Mum says I have to go to school to hang out with other kids and to make sure I don’t do business all the time. We’re still negotiating!”

So where to from here for the pint-sized entrepreneur? Business expansion, of course. When she launched she was making 10 soaps a week; by October she was making 750.

”Each time I’ve made some profit, I’ve used it to expand my business,” Ava says. “I’ve had to buy more moulds to keep up with demand, plus soap tools, bulk packaging and storage shelves.”

As with any business, there has been the odd hiccup along the way, but Ava says it’s all part of the learning experience.

”I have disasters all the time, but they often make my business better,” she says. ”One day I mixed the soap all wrong so it set fluffy instead of smooth. That’s how I invented ‘soap buttercream’ to ice my ‘cupcakes’. I constantly try to improve my business. It’s been such a whirlwind but the owls and I are always investigating new things. We just found some cool new biodegradable cosmetic glitter because we were worried regular glitter was bad for the environment. ”

Technology has allowed Ava to run her business professionally, even though she’s young.

”It’s funny because the internet lets you run a business like an adult, even if you’re a kid at home cuddling a cat!,” Ava says. ”I do my own emails, Facebook and run my website shop. I do banking for my market stall using the bank’s automatic deposit machine. I order my supplies online. When I courier my soap to customers, I just fill in an online form to get the courier to come.

”I crack up sometimes because when people meet us in real life they often try and get Mum to answer all the business questions. They don’t realise it’s me they should be talking to!”

Ava wants other kids (and their parents) to know that starting their own small business is possible with a good idea and a bit of research. ”Everything is possible as there’s so much free information and advice available to everyone on the internet,” she says.

”I learned almost all my business and soap-making skills online. I learned coding from MIT, got business ideas from Elon Musk and discovered how you can make hydrogen to blow up your lawn. That doesn’t help with the soap, but it’s still pretty awesome! Sometimes I can’t sleep my brain is so full of ideas.”

Ava’s original goal for the business was to save enough money for a trip to Paris but, in true Ava style, that dream has already been reached.

”I’ve saved enough for a plane ticket to Paris, now I’m working on the spending money!”

Previously in Amazing Kids:

You’re never too young to save the planet

The boy who saved the elephants

This content is entirely funded by Flick, New Zealand’s fairest power deal. In the past year, their customers saved $320 on average, which pays for a cheeky bottle of wine in the trolley almost every shop. Please support us by switching to them right now!