1 Oct 2016

How your old fishing gear can change lives

From This Way Up, 12:15 pm on 1 October 2016

Not many of us go away on holiday to Fiji and discover a way to change other people's lives for the better. But 17 year old Finn Ross saw how locals were struggling with old or broken fishing gear and decided, with his mate Max Lichtenstein, to do something about it.

Finn and Max set up a charity called Let Them Fish that is collecting hundreds of second-hand reels and rods, kilometres of fishing line, and lots of diving stuff here in New Zealand and sending it off to people who need it in Fiji and Tonga.

They currently have collection points at nine fishing shops in Auckland, Tauranga and Whangarei and are rapidly outgrowing their current "storage facilities" (aka their parents' garages!). They have plans to take the idea nationwide.

This Way Up goes along to Finn's parents garage and WS Laurie and Co – a fishing shop in Auckland that is one of the collection points - to see how Let Them Fish works.