Victims Support today advised victims of the Christchurch Mosque attacks on the completion of donations from its Givealittle page fundraising, as well as other donations made.
Kevin Tso, Chief Executive of Victim Support stated: “This unprecedented event has devastated individual lives, families and the communities. In the weeks following the attacks, we were contacted by more than 900 people seeking support, as well as people in NZ and across the world wishing to donate.
“Normally Victim Support can provide a $5,000 next-of-kin homicide assistance grant from the Ministry of Justice Victim Assurance Scheme. The donated funds have meant we could do so much more to provide emergency funding to help victims with their short-term needs.
“As we have worked to provide victims with a series of lump sum payments, the Police List has provided us with a way to ensure 100% of the funds were distributed to the victims most impacted by the mosque attacks. We thank the Police for their tireless work in identifying and verifying victims. This provided us with the framework for apportioning donations for the last distributions, where no other precedent is available to us.”
Victim Support’s donated funds for the victims now totals $13.2 million, including the $10.9 million raised through the Givealittle fund, $275 thousand from American crowd-funding platform Go Fund Me, and many hundreds of thousands donated by individuals, community groups, and businesses.
In addition to the emergency payments victims have received over the last 16 weeks for their short-term needs, a last lump sum payment will start to be distributed to the Police list victims this week, bringing the total distributed to more than $12 million.
“Victim Support received clear feedback during our engagement with victims that the bereaved and seriously injured must be prioritized in the final distribution, but that other victims present must still receive support to recognize mental trauma. Reflecting this feedback, this last payment will be allocated to the 296 people in the four Police list categories based on increasing ratios.”
This will see the following lump sum payments made:
- $50 000 lump sum for next of kin deceased during the attack, bringing the total received to $90,000*
- $26 000 lump sum to victims shot during the attack, bringing the total received to $51,000
- $ 9000 lump sum to victims injured, but not by gunshot, during the attack, bringing the total received to $34,000
- $5000 lump sum to victims present in the mosque at the time of the attacks, bringing the total received to $17,000
*These payments exclude the $5000 Victim Assistance Scheme grant also available to next-of-kin.
An amount of $421,000 from two anonymous donors will also be given to the Christchurch Foundation to support severely injured victims’ medium to long term support.
Christchurch Foundation Chief Executive Amy Carter states: “In the days immediately after the mosque attacks, we agreed with Victim Support that their donated funds should be used for victims emergency and short term needs, while the Christchurch Foundation would focus on medium to long term needs. This enabled the Foundation to focus all of our energies over the last three months on raising funds. Our two organisations will continue to work closely together and I will be making an announcement tomorrow explaining how the Christchurch Foundation will proceed from here.”
A contingency amount remaining from these donations will be held to ensure Victim Support can fund any additions or changes of status on the Police list, as well as support existing commitments to victims’ family members’ travel grants. Any funds remaining from the contingency will transferred to the Christchurch Foundation by no later than the first anniversary of the mosque attacks.
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