The Toastie Shack is a Southern Easter Camp institution. What began as one youth group bringing along a single toastie machine to help provide warm food grew into a makeshift restaurant selling thousands of toasties, set up from scratch each year.
Southern Easter Camp brings together 3500+ young people from over 90 different youth groups across the South Island for five days at Spencer Beach TOP 10 Holiday Park in Canterbury. Youth groups from the CCCNZ movement are part of the mix, including Grace Church Richmond, Hope Community Church (Nelson), Halswell Community Church (Christchurch), Rutland Street Church (Christchurch) and Riccarton Community Church (Christchurch).
Rutland Street Youth Leader Mel Bird discovered Toastie Shack eight years ago when she attended Easter Camp as a camp parent, “Everybody who goes to Easter Camp knows about Toastie Shack—and any kid that you talk to recognises it as a cool place to go.”
Two years ago Mel heard the church that had initially established Toastie Shack was stepping back, and she saw an opportunity for a new team to step up—with significant support from the Rutland Street Church whānau.
“We see helping with Toastie Shack as having a couple of main benefits. Firstly, you’re interacting with the kids that are there and providing a good experience for them. We always make sure there’s something on the menu for $1 every year, so no matter what you’ve got there’s an opportunity to go to the Toastie Shack and get something.
“Secondly, it allows us the space to bring people in to serve who might never get to see the inside of Easter Camp—whether they’re older adults, or in a different phase of life. It also allows us to connect with young people who were part of youth group previously but aren’t connected in with church, it allows us to keep the relationship going and provide them with an opportunity to come and serve.
“Thirdly, we have the privilege of raising money for World Vision—and that’s so cool to be able to do that.”
Toastie Shack provides a warm spot to hang out over the weekend, and together the team makes about 2500 toasties, 2800 hash browns, 1800 pottles of chips and 2000 slushies over Easter Weekend.
About half the team of volunteers is made up of people from Rutland Street Church, “Rutland Street is very much behind us, and have been super supportive. But it’s not just an RSC thing, one of my former youth groupers, Logan Matthews (now working with Grace Vineyard) plays a key role, alongside others from a variety of churches. Across the whole weekend we had 38 volunteers come through—some do just one shift, and some are there all day, every day.”
Seeing the volunteers come through and get involved has been a highlight for Mel, “I honestly find it quite joyful, particularly when you see people really thrive in the environment. We had one volunteer who was there from 6.30am to 9pm every day… and helped with both set up and pack down! This person literally turned 70 on Easter Saturday and still wanted to be there! It is such a great team of enthusiastic and willing volunteers.”
