The local ray of light for babies in need

LOCAL charity Sunshine is seeking to look out for babies and the planet with their mission to provide families in need with new and used baby goods.

Director, Glenda Serpell, founded the organisation to support children and families facing crisis.

“I believe in family, and love the concept of family, and wanted to support those that didn’t have family support structures in place,” she said.

“It just makes sense to me that when there are people with a resource and people without, it just makes sense to share that resource.”

Since Sunshine began operating in 2016, the organisation has helped more than 5500 children in the region and saved an estimated 24,500 kilos of used baby goods from landfill.

The charity provides everything needed to care for a baby from clothes, toys, and essentials like nappies, to bigger items such as car seats and prams.

“We partner with social service agencies and have provisions to provide new and secondhand baby goods to families in need,” Ms Serpell said.

“We do this through a referral process, all those agencies and they come to us with the needs of their clients and we, our goal is to fulfill those needs.”

As demand increased, Sunshine has expanded its reach to support families throughout Central Victoria.

“In the last 12 months we’ve been able to also reach up to the northcentral region, and we do deliveries and pickups to Rochester, Echuca, and the northcentral shire,” Ms Serpell said.

Sunshine is a self-funded organisation, with goods and funds raised from community donations, which Ms Serpell said is made possible by their strong social media presence.

“This week for instance we have a really high need of the really tiny baby clothes, 4-O and 5-O for new babies, and we just put a post out on social media and community responds and that’s really lovely,” she said.

With the bulk of donations received in kind, Ms Serpell said there was scope to gift monetary contributions to finance running costs, like rent on the organisation’s base of operations in Bendigo East.

“What we’re really seeking from community is some constant sponsorship, like regular sponsorship so we know month in month out that we’re going to have our rent paid,” she said.