Real life: How a home robbery prompted Campbell Hill to found charity Good Neighbor, helping thousands of Tauranga residents

Authorities eventually agreed and the 17-year-old was given 50 community hours with Hill.

However, the problem was that the young man did not show up at the scheduled time. So Hill took matters into his own hands—with the help of divine intervention.

“I was driving home one day and I thought, ‘I’m really looking forward to dinner.’ And this voice spoke directly to me: “Yes, but your friend is not.” And I stopped the car and thought, ‘What should I do?'” he said. Real life.

“I came up with the idea of ​​going to Bethlehem Baptist Church and getting a food parcel and taking it to his family. That’s what I did.”

Hill said when he arrived, he heard the boy and his mother arguing about there being no food in the house.

“As you can imagine, it was like, ‘Wow, this is the right time.’ I called them, his mom hugged me, and we ended up taking the food into the house. And when we were in the kitchen, I opened the door to put food in there, and realized that there wasn’t even salt and pepper there.”

As the teenager worked with him and began to talk about his struggles, Hill told Cowan that seeing his needs locally had “opened up the community for him.”

“I thought there was a ton of need in my community, I just needed to open my eyes a little to see—and to respond somehow.”

Out of this meeting Good Neighbor was born, a community support charity that provides practical help and key links to the community.

It now boasts six separate community initiatives, including Food Rescue, which saves 2.5 tons of food per day that would otherwise be wasted and redistributes it to those in need; neighborhood projects to help with yard cleanups; and a kitchen that teaches people how to use the food on hand to create nutritious meals.

They also have a warehouse that gives out 500 cubic meters of firewood every winter, a community garden where people can grow and pick fresh fruits and vegetables, and a care team that helps people budget, apply, and get people to work, as well as offering social connections.

Hill says he and the Good Neighbor team have a “if we can make it happen, let’s do it” attitude.

“One of the things I started to realize early on was that often we go through life with blinders on – and we don’t really see or stop long enough to see what our needs are.

“We just started doing this, and we had some determination and a little courage to really make a difference.”

Hill says everyone can do what they have.

“When I was living on my street, a gang of mongrels moved in just two doors down from me. And I thought to myself, after six weeks, this is not good, we haven’t welcomed them into the neighborhood.

“So I asked my wife to bake me a pie and went out to catch some trout and smoke it. I approached them, knocked on the door and received a reasonable but rude response. And the next day, as I was standing in the driveway, a car drove by and they waved to me.

“I thought to myself, you know what, I can’t change what they do or what they stand for or anything like that – but I can change the climate on my street. And it really made a huge difference, just that act of kindness.”

Hill says his founding of Good Neighbor was based on his strong Christian faith, which he says calls him to do good “for the least of these.”

“I was raised in church circles for a long time, and I really wanted this to be an expression of what I believed in. I truly believe that the message that the Church needs to convey to our community is truly about service and those in need.

“I look at it like a rug. When the carpet wears out, all these threads appear. And so our role is to go where something breaks and weave it back – weave our energy and resources.

“I believe that we are called not only to love God, but also to love people, to love our neighbor – this is very important. You can’t separate it. And so I just wanted to bring that back into focus because sometimes the social side of things is missing.”

Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan talks to famous guests about their lives, upbringings and how they see the world. Tune in on Sundays from 19:30 on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.