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For immediate release

— Wellington, Thursday, 13 September 2012.

Online charity auction for families in dire need.

The InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) kicks off its successful online auction series today in aid of Kiwi families living with serious hardship.

The online auction will run for two months and IHG’s five InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels will each put up dining and accommodation packages and other items, such as tickets to Wellington’s World of Wearable Art. More than $20,000 worth of products and services are up for grabs.

Money raised will fund The Salvation Army’s Give a Family a Break programme. The programme provides holidays for disadvantaged families that have been identified as being under immense pressure. Last year, IHG fundraising projects generated $25,700, providing 30 families with all-expenses paid holidays – for many their first ever family holiday.

Salvation Army Public Relations Secretary Shane Chisholm says the benefits of a break for families that are faced with the ever-present and enormously stressful struggle of living hand-to-mouth should not be underestimated.

“It’s also a chance for families to take a rare pause and re-establish family ties and perhaps look to a future beyond the next batch of bills,” he says. “This programme is effective and important, and without IHG’s work, it simply wouldn’t happen.”

Recipient families have been working closely with Salvation Army social workers and budget advisers and are people who are making tremendous efforts to improve their situations in the face of great adversity, Mr Chisholm says.

IHG has a long relationship with the Sallies and has been involved in a number of joint projects. Its hotels and staff have been raising money for Give a Family a Break for three years through the auctions and local projects such as barbeques, selling muffins and gingerbread, dinners where hotel chefs showcase their cuisine, and setting up coin donation points at hotel receptions.

IHG’s Wellington-based Director of Sales and Marketing, Geoff Naumann says the company feels a responsibility to the communities it operates in, and its partnership with The Salvation Army is one way of meeting this responsibility.

People can take part in the online auction at www.sella.co.nz

Issued on the Authority of Commissioner Donald Bell (Territorial Commander)
The Salvation Army, New Zealand Fiji & Tonga Territory

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