How a local charity helped a mother through 'some of the darkest times'

Port Macquarie's Nurtured Village Hampers brings hope and support to local families. Alicia Payne shares her experience with the charity.

Transcript

00:00Hi, my name is Alisha and I've been a huge supporter of the Nurtured Billy Tampa since

00:04it first arrived in our hometown of Port Macquarie. We love everything that it stands for,

00:08myself and my family, but never did we ever expect that we'd be on the receiving end,

00:13which is exactly where we found ourselves in the middle of last year,

00:17when my beautiful four-year-old boy was diagnosed with leukaemia. We were given 10 minutes to pack

00:24a bag, put on an emergency flight to a hospital that was three hours from home, didn't know when

00:30we'd be returning again, even for a short visit. That wasn't until about four months later and we

00:34basically lived there for about six. This alone was pretty shocking and traumatic, but after just

00:41buying our second family business, just a week before all this happened, caring for an 18-month

00:47old as well who I'd never been apart from. I was also 12 weeks pregnant at the time with this one.

00:55My world just fell apart, but even though the weeks that followed that were the worst of our life,

01:05shortly after arriving at our little granny flat that we ended up living in down near the hospital,

01:12a couple of boxes arrived for us. It was food that filled our fridge, filled our freezer,

01:19it was vouchers that helped pay for fuel, vouchers that helped pay for groceries,

01:26toys and all sorts of different things to entertain the kids and put a smile on their face,

01:30which we didn't see for weeks. To me it was just a community of both people that I knew

01:36and some I'd never met back home saying, we've got you.

01:41A group that got behind us again and provided a meal train when we were granted a short visit

01:46back home so that we could make the most of our time together as a family.

01:51And again, actually, when Mabel was born,

01:57being together at home is just something I'll never take for granted again and I'm

02:01so grateful to the Netrude Village Panthers, to Casey and our local team for helping us during

02:07those dark times because I'll never forget it.