Monthly Archive for April, 2004

April 2004 – Margaret Suman

Published by Margaret Suman on April 20, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

This month, opportunities have come up to work with additional conservation and school groups, so we are booking lots of upcoming visits from Portobello School (ages 5-10), Otago Horticulture Polytechnic students, and the Botanical Society. All with different interests and levels of learning. Some we are hoping to assist and some that we know we will learn from.

Nursery and Reserve visits
We’ve also been busy looking into how other nurseries and reserves operate.

Anita and I thought we would start locally and visit a well-known commercial nursery (Ribbonwood), a community nursery (Shetland Street Community Nursery) and an educational nursery facility (Otago Polytechnic Horticulture Department), all very different from one another but all three very useful to our purposes. In talking to commercial nurseries you realize how quantity and time are so very important, community nurseries are as much about volunteers as they are about plants and academic facilities are all about learning. We gained an unbelievable amount of experience from all three and they all gave us ideas for improving the YEPT nursery.

In addition to local nurseries, we ventured north to one of the more successful reserves on the North Island, Tiritiri Matangi. We were amazed in what can happen in just 10 short years in a warmer climate than our own. And the bird life was amazing!

Catlins Visit
We then went down to the Catlins for the day with, YEPT Project Officer, David Blair and Ranger, Dave McFarlane. The trip was multifaceted. We wanted to collect seeds, assess the site and check on number of penguins and the two Daves wanted to visit with a farmer who had a beautiful piece of land where cattle were eating the native bush and disturbing nesting penguins.

The Trust has been building up the relationship with the farmer for quite some time, but now that we have the personnel and time, we were able to make arrangements to help the penguins by fencing off the gully to protect them from the cattle. The beach was one of the loveliest areas we have seen and its great to know that the penguins there will now be able to raise their chicks without being trampled by sheep and cattle.

We also visited another farmer at Waikawa heads. He had been having trouble with people bringing dogs onto the beach which were disturbing yellow-eyed penguins, Dave and Dave arranged to install a “No Dogs Allowed” sign as well as repair a damaged fence.

Additional Happenings
To get a head start on the spring months and to test out new ways of producing plants for the Trust, we have been sowing seeds a little earlier this year. We are also trying different and rare species that we have not grown before but would be wonderful to have back onto the habitats. We have wanted to try this for a long time but with time constraints we have been unable to do so. Thanks to the Vodafone New Zealand Foundation, this year we can spend more time at the nursery doing this and we will benefit from this work for many years to come.

We are also planning some physical improvements to the nursery and have been busy researching shade houses, getting bids from plumbers and electricians, designing potting benches to customize our nursery for different community groups we are expecting this year.

Now it is time for us to buckle down and prepare for the winter.

Until next time… Margaret and Anita

April 2004 – Victoria Carpenter

Published by Victoria Carpenter on April 2, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

After the excitement of March it is not surprising that April was a little quieter and gave me a bit more time to reflect on things.

March concluded with the rousing Vodafone New Zealand Foundation get-together where we met with last year’s winners and talked to people about our goals and our frustrations, it was very motivating to see the 2002/2003 people with a full year’s work under their belts and fully come to terms with how much can be achieved in a year if you are dedicated to making a difference.

Following this we had the Truck Show at Motat and it was a stunning event with fantastic support from the Ferrari Owners Club. You might well wonder where the link lies between trucks and Ferraris, their support of the MDA! A percentage of the gate takings went to us, and the Ferraris were quick to conceive of a fundraising venture: selling photographs of show visitors with an Enzo – a very special Ferrari of which there is only one in New Zealand.

My biggest challenge so far this year was met and conquered. I finished my communications plan for the MDA. This was quite a lengthy document, in which I had to rein in my aspirations for the organization as a whole, and tailor my goals to be achievable in a year. In accordance with protocols I submitted my proposal to our governing council for their vote and it went though unanimously!

Wow, I am on my way-and now I know where I am going to and how I am going to get there. For further confirmation that I was on the right track I sent my plan into the Head of Communications and Public Relations at AUT. I guess I must be doing o.k. because he invited me in as a guest lecturer for his third year class about the role of communications at a not for profit. Another opportunity to get the Muscular Dystrophy name out there and talk about the issues.

This month we also finished the filming of Muscular Dystrophy’s ten-minute video. One of the ‘stars’ is my father who traveled up from South Wairarapa. The focus of his segment was all the extra considerations required for those with Neuromuscular conditions who wish to travel anywhere. An example of this is that my parents drive up to Auckland (8 hours) because it’s easier than trying to catch a plane (1 hour). The question is how can you get on a plane if you haven’t got the muscular strength to get in and out of your wheelchair and into the seat on the airplane unassisted? (By that I mean that you can’t really expect the flight attendant to ‘lift’ a grown man.) You can’t.

I thought back to all the flights I have taken in my life, I have seen one disabled person on a plane, once, and that guy had so much strength in his upper body he swung himself in and out of chairs no problem.

Later in the month a couple of my colleagues went to Australia to compete in the wheelchair sports and they had their caregivers transfer them between chairs. Basically if you can’t transfer yourself, you can’t travel on planes.

This is all food for thought following on from last months situation where a man with MD was given no choice but to crawl onto a train, I am becoming increasingly aware that disability is not one size fits all and yet many of the solutions put in place by service providers assume that disabled means in a wheelchair with strength in your upper body. Increasingly also, I am realizing how important it is to get the Muscular Dystrophy identity clear and out there.

This has been a month for thinking and strategizing, bring May on!

Victoria

April 2004 – Tracey Napa

Published by Tracey Napa on April 2, 2004 in Diary Updates. 0 Comments

Well over the last three months I have been busy and involved in the ongoing project of resource development, organizing helpful tools to facilitate a greater awareness of the issues surrounding mental health and mental illness.

With many of our clients, their language skills are minimal, thus visual aids are an effective means of communicating ideas. I have been given positive responses from the support workers about how effective these visual aids are in helping their clients to gain insight into their own unique conditions.

The resources available to clients include a vast selection of visual aids, which range from: depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, stress, post traumatic stress disorder, drug abuse, the symptoms of these, how anti psychotic medication helps, side effects of medication, coping skills, recovery, good and bad behaviours, counseling… the list goes on.

We discovered that recent research indicates that Deaf people are more susceptible to mental illness. The prevalence of depression and of mental illness can be partly attributed to certain psychosocial factors which Deaf people are challenged with in every day living. Such factors include: social isolation, the frustration involved coping in a hearing world, lack of positive role models, communication barriers within their hearing family, loneliness, and if they do not sign, high levels of unemployment due to language deprivation.

Early detection of schizophrenia is crucial in the recovery and treatment, and helps in the prevention of its ongoing effects. However due to language difficulties and social isolation or communication barriers within their families (if their families do not sign), many Deaf people suffer the symptoms for long periods before they are noticed by relatives and reach the stage where they are able to ask for and receive treatment from health professionals.

Hopefully my contribution in resource development can help to provide learning tools to support the process of self-understanding of clients’ own mental illness, as insight is the key to healing.

So, the pictorial resources that have so far been developed will definitely facilitate the interpersonal communication between clients and the support workers here.

Helping to raise awareness and present visually recognizable information around the issues of mental illness and mental health is a vital part of supporting each person’s journey to recovery.

Tracey