'Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for all the blessings you gave us.”

It's a little prayer uttered by seven-year-old Emma Mischewski when she's being driven to school every day.

'And I pray for the homeless that they may find shelter and I pray they won't get sick.”

The Bethlehem schoolgirl isn't depending solely on divine assistance for the homeless and needy. She is mucking in, running a roadside stand selling feijoas to passersby. And it seems people want to be part of the goodwill towards the less fortunate.

'I deposited $71.20 into a bank account the other day,” says mum Helen Mischewski. 'One woman gave Emma $20 for a $5 bag of feijoas and yet another woman donated $250.”

Emma Mischewski saw a homeless person in downtown Tauranga and she was troubled by what she saw. 'He looked homeless, he look sad and didn't have very nice clothes.”

The family's two feijoa trees were in full fruit so Emma decided to put them to good use. 'I decided to sell them, $5 for two kilograms and $3 for one kilogram.” Starting at Easter she sat out in the chill under the tree in the front garden selling feijoas to anyone with a little kindness and some change in their pocket.

'Some people just emptied their wallets and purses of coins,” says Helen. It was heartening.

It's a project that's grown legs. 'We could have just given the money to the Sallies and been done with it. But then we wondered how many more people we could impact.” It seems like many people.

Emma is now making up care packs for the homeless and needy – one for men and one for women. Bags containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, deodorant, sanitary aids, chapstick, wipes and tissues.

One 7-year-old's caring is having a flow-on effect. The family dentist, Gardens Dental in Cliff Rd, gave Emma 140 small tubes of toothpaste to fill the packs. They'll be distributed to the homeless and needy through Tauranga organisations already working with those people.

'Even our own church, Tauranga Central Baptist, has people knocking on the door in need of help” says Helen.

So what started as a little girl's Easter fruit stand has grown into a small suburban not-for-profit with a Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/emmasmission. Someone's even offered to set up a website for her.

Emma, who loves maths, is a good illustrator and does gymnastics, also got a certificate of merit from her school for her philanthropy. 'It was a ‘Reflecting God's Love' certificate,” says Emma. 'That made me pretty happy.”