Southland Community Challenge

14/04/2026

Deer to Care connects the wild to those in need. This Stag will be processed and shared, turning a harvest into meaningful support. 💚

📸 - Deer to Care hunter Tim with four legged hunting buddy Sadie.

09/04/2026

We go again!
Southland Community Challenge 2 - Surf to City 2027.
Southland Express

2027 Charities:
Hospice Southland
Deer To Care
Koru Care Southland

09/04/2026

03/04/2026

Help shape a more active, healthier Southland.
Active Southland is seeking new trustees to join our Board in 2026 — including one appointed and two co‑opted positions.
This is a meaningful opportunity to contribute your skills, insight and leadership to a regional organisation working to ensure “Everyone Active Every Day.”
We’re particularly keen to hear from people with experience in:
☑ Health and wellbeing
☑ Finance or commercial governance
☑ Strategy and leadership
☑ Sport, active recreation or play
☑ Strong community connections, including Eastern Southland
If you’re passionate about equity, community wellbeing and making a lasting impact, we’d love to hear from you.
🔗more info: https://tinyurl.com/yeza8a3r

02/04/2026

28/03/2026

🦌 Deer to Care | Venison Donation Initiative 🦌

We’re proud to announce an exciting new initiative supporting vulnerable people in our community 💚

Hunters can now donate boned-out venison directly to Uppercuts Butchery in Winton, where it will be processed free of charge and donated to local charities through Deer to Care.

How it works:

✔️ Drop off fresh or frozen, boned-out venison to Uppercuts Butchery
✔️ Complete a Wild Game Declaration processing form
✔️ The meat is professionally inspected, processed, and turned into nutritious meals for those in need

Important requirements:

• Venison must be ethically harvested
• Must be free from contamination and fit for processing
• Uppercuts Butchery will carry out strict quality control checks
• MPI regulations are fully followed, and MPI has been informed of this initiative

We take this responsibility seriously and ask hunters to go the extra mile to ensure only high-quality meat is donated. Your care in the field makes a real difference on the plate.

Thanks to funding arranged by Deer to Care, all processing is done at no cost to the hunter or the community — turning generosity into real impact.

👏 Huge thanks to Uppercuts Butchery for receiving donations and community grant funders for their valued support in making this initiative possible.

Together, local hunters, butchers, and community organisations are helping feed those who need it most.

If you hunt — you can help ❤️

22/03/2026

Southland Community Challenge 2027 will have another new charity to support in Koru Care Southland.

Koru Care Southland is proud to bring a little bit of joy into the lives of children with terminal illnesses or permanent disabilities. Koru Care Southland was established in 1993 and has taken hundreds of children on a holiday of a lifetime since then.
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Countless hours of organising and fundraising are put into each trip, of which there are two per year.

22/03/2026

Introducing our first new charity to the Southland Community Challenge 2027. Deer To Care!

Deer to Care is a group of individuals who cherish the camaraderie and adventure that hunting provides and are also deeply aware of the issues of hunger and food insecurity in our community.

They have combined these passions to create a plan to donate high-quality, free-range wild game to local charities that distribute the meat to those in need.

22/03/2026

Southland Community Challenge will return in 2027 to support our legacy charity Hospice Southland.

Hospice Southland provides compassionate, specialist palliative care and support for patients and their whānau living with life-limiting illness
- helping them live every moment with comfort and dignity.

12/03/2026

We took a shot! We had a lofty goal raise $1 per person for the population of Invercargill and hand it over to 3 deserving Southland Charities. Every dollar counted and every dollar stayed local! We didn’t hit that goal but we didn’t stop trying. The thing we love about goals is that it’s not just about hitting the goal, it’s about who you become in the process.

We fought a battle against weight and weather and we won. It wasn’t about the time it took or who was there to witness it. It was to deliver a promise we made to the Southland community and ourselves.

Thank you to and our sponsors.

Thank you to our 3 charities for placing your trust in us.
KiwiHarvest Southland
The Grace Street Project
Hospice Southland

Thank you Southland for showing up to support a new idea and donating generously.

That’s a wrap, see you next in 2027!