The NZ Grocery Charity Ball

As the saying goes “good things take time” – and this certainly proved the case with the NZ Grocery Charity Ball.

With the initial 2021 date being postponed twice due to Covid, the Trustees, guests, and organisers were all looking forward to the ball going ahead on the 29th October at the Cordis in Auckland.

680 guests filled The Great Room to capacity, and were welcomed by MC and CatWalk Patron, Toni Street, who had so generously given her time to officiate. The evening programme began with CatWalk Chairman, David Pretorius, who gave an overview of CatWalk, and the current projects we are funding.

After dining on delicious fare from the Cordis, the guests were entertained by the incredible Marcus Winter https://thesandman.co.nz/ who told a story through sand art. Guests also had the opportunity to bid on a wide variety of items on the silent auction which ran throughout the night.

The live auction attracted strong bidding under the hammer of auctioneer Morgan Carter with great support from Toni as his “bid spotter”!

Brad Smeele then took to the stage, and the audience was mesmerised as Brad spoke of his life as a tetraplegic following a wakeboard accident.  To be able to help those such as Brad to get an improvement in functionality was at front of mind as was evident by the overwhelming generosity of the guests who pledged donations direct to spinal cord injury research.

Guests danced the night away and each left with a goodie bag packed with treats that had been generously donated by so many businesses.

It was an overwhelmingly successful night, and we were all ecstatic with the resulting donation to CatWalk of $306,000 which was beyond all expectations.

Our sincere thanks to the NZ Grocery Charity Trustees, their sponsors, and guests for supporting CatWalk.

We also thank our wonderful CatWalkers who so generously donated prizes for the silent and live auctions.  We were proud to be able to present such an array of items and experiences from the CatWalk family.