No more clothes left in the house

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“I decided to make a group on Facebook after the galas got cancelled due to Covid,” she says.

“The galas provided a lot of funding for the school.

The Witherlea School community was great in donating clothing. We had some good brands and after I shared photos of the clothing it became really popular and started to grow,” Martina says.

“There were at least 750 people in the group and friends invited friends.

It snowballed and I was getting thousands of dollars and it kept going to help with the school funding shortfall.”

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Address 72 High St, Blenheim P.O.Box 634 Blenheim www.blenheimsun.co.nz twice for the ‘Good Sorts’ segment by teachers Amy Lucas and PJ Muir.

“Hayden (Jones - TVNZ presenter) said to me he gets 1000 nominations a month.

I asked him why he chose me when he must get so many amazing people.

He said because my name had popped up a second time and he said, he must look into this,” she says.

Martina says the money raised has gone towards building a scooter track at the school.

15 bags of clothes were also donated to the Hospice Shop Marlborough in Cleghorn Street.

I even put clothes on my mannequin at home to style it,” she says.

Martina says she is a big advocate of recycling and reusing clothes as it is better and cheaper for all involved.

“I’d like to do something similar,” she says, “but work is busy at the moment. Never say never.

Everyone at home is happy there are no more clothes in the house,” she laughs.

“We had a sleepout full of clothes and we couldn’t even get people to stay because of all the boxes and bags.”

“I was initially going for $5000 but then the project got successful.

The more money I was getting, the more motivated I was.”

Martina was nominated

“I’ve made lots of new friends and of course money for the school which is great. Clothes and shoes were dropped off to my letter box and at work, it was all about connections.

My car was always full of clothes.

As for having a TV camera in her face, Martina says it ‘was horrible’.

“Hayden made it really fun and pleasant.

We were laughing all the time. It wasn’t about me, it was about the school and the kids.”

Martina’s segment aired on TVNZ on Sunday night.