Christchurch Tragedy: 11-Year-Old Girl Gifts Birthday Money to Muslim Community

An 11-year-old Stratford girl used her 11th birthday to demonstrate love and support for the Muslim community.

As she turned 11  just a few days after the tragic  Christchurch terrorist attacks, Tatjana Hanne  raised money to support the Muslim community, NZ Herald reported.

She decided to have a party for her birthday, inviting everyone in her class, but asking for no presents.

“Instead, I asked all my friends to consider gifting a small donation instead of a card or a present, which I could give to the Muslim community to use in some way,” Tatjana said.

Collecting donations from her friends, she and her brothers, Thiemo (7) and Achim (14), added some of their own pocket money to get the total to $400.

On Sunday, Tatjana attended the Crescent Moon, The Asian Face of Islam in NZ exhibition at the Percy Thomson Gallery in Stratford to hand over the money to Maha Al-Fayyad, a representative of the Taranaki Muslim community.

Maha says the gesture was “very touching” and thanked Tatjana on behalf of her fellow Muslims.

“It really is quite incredible, to have someone so young do this for us,” she said.

The generous donation is not the first to be made to the Muslim community after the Christchurch attacks.

Millions of dollars have been donated over the past months to the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

Last June, a Jewish organization in the American city of Pittsburgh raised almost $1 million for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings.

About 74,000 donors flocked to one Givalittle page alone, raising more than $5.8 million for the victims and families of Friday’s terror attacks in which 50 Muslim worshippers were killed inside Christchurch mosques.

The page, started by the non-profit Victim Support group, was overwhelmed by financial support from ordinary Kiwis who set a new Givealittle record by raising $3.5m within the first 24 hours.

The LaunchGood fundraising page managed by the NZ Islamic Information Centre which had also collected more than $2m.

Australian teenager William Connolly, known as “egg boy”, has donated about $100,000 to the victims of the Christchurch mosque terrorist attack.