Work to develop a good expansion based continues. I have been working hard with the team here at Big Buddy on strategies and writing detailed planning documents especially around training new coordinators. It’s kinda scary to realise just how much we’ve had in our heads and its not until you have to write detailed training manuals that you find out. I spent some time in Wellington interviewing potential coordinators there and catching up with our friends in Barnadoes who are very supportive of having Big Buddy operating in Wellington. I even managed a coffee with my fellow WOD award winner Deborah Morris Travers, it was good to catch up with her work and she was able to share some Wellington contacts with me. I have been working in the Warkworth area as well, interviewing a potential coordinator there and talking to local people about Big Buddy in the Rodney area. I started doing some thinking around business sponsorship, developing an idea, Big Buddy Business Supporters. The idea is simple. Big Buddy builds a series of strong win/win relationships with select businesses across New Zealand. Each business will commit to Big Buddy a certain amount of funding, promotional opportunities and perhaps expertise or help from their staff. Big Buddy in turn will help each business by allowing our brand and logo to be use to help promote that business with customers or employees. I figure in an increasingly competitive world its important for business people to find a point of difference. Customers are changing, becoming much more selective in who they deal with. Recent studies by Philanthropy NZ show kiwis prefer to shop or do business with companies who support worthwhile causes, who a business is and therefore who they support is as important as price in many cases. In a very synchronistic way I was approached by a business person looking for exactly this type of relationship. Michelle Dobson is a real estate agent in Auckland’s North Shore area; she had been a mentor once, loved the idea of it and wanted to support us. She also needed a competitive edge in her work so we negotiated an agreement where she dontated a portion of her income to Big Buddy in return for using our brand to support her work. Had some other talks with a larger business in the fruit drinks industry, nothing has come of that yet. So the idea is developing and I will be working hard to get more business people on board with it. Oh yes we were finalists in the Waitakere Enterprise Business Awards, it was nice to be aknowledge in this way.
Monthly Archive for July, 2007
Well we managed to graduate 4 young men back into the community on the 8th of July – a huge ceremony which was held in the local District Council chambers. In attendance was the Mayor Alan Milne, National MP Nathan Guy, Labour MP Darren Hughes and a number of very high ranking people from the various ministry departments.
The graduation went really well and it was approximately 4 weeks after that we had confirmation of wages for the Mentors. They as expected are very happy to be able to support their families. Three of the four young men were placed into jobs and for various reasons work has run out so we are currently looking to get them into employment over the next week or so. We have since found a donor who gave us some money to help with the continuation of the next course which was a huge blessing for us.
What a busy month, travelling to the USA with the New Zealand hip hop teams for the World Hip Hop Champs in Los Angeles. It’s one of the highlights of my year. Organising the trip was full on; fundraising, organising the NZ teams, meetings teams from other crews from around the world and travelling to different dance studios. I now have a new outlook on how we do hip hop dance here in NZ.
Nine teams were present at the champs. NZ made themselves known by performing a Haka in front of all the countries on orientation day – a memorable moment. And this year saw the largest amount of entries in the history of the competition. Fearless Dance Crew from Rotorua took the bronze medal in the Varsity section, which was an amazing achievement and the only medal for NZ.
DZIAH ranked in tenth place overall out of 38 teams in the adult section final. It was a tough competition but we gained the respect from the crowd – having them on their feet for the whole routine (no other team achieved that in the entire competition)! We made our mark and received so much positive feedback on our style of dance. Other countries want to visit NZ because of this and I feel inspired to keep going. We built some great networks for our dance academy and it was a major success in bringing people together through our passion of dance.
We were taken care of by a San Diego Studio where we got to take classes free of charge. We got to watch their top crew from Studio 429. So much talent and it was good to see others doing the same thing in another country! Another studio we visited was Culture Shock Dance Center – one of the biggest hip hop dance companies in the world (with branches all over the world). Like us they’re inspiring youth using dance to connect with people and I can see we are on the right track. Youth have so much potential – it’s about harnessing this energy and putting it into something positive rather than destructive.
I bring back the knowledge of how others are running their studios and it was interesting to see the level of dance in the USA … some of the best dancing I have ever seen. They are so passionate about the whole dance culture and I want to bring this flavour back to NZ; to impact our nation and create more opportunities for NZ youth to experience.
