This month marks one significant milestone in our expansion plan as I took on a new coordinator, Martin Hosking who, once he completes training, will be responsible for covering Auckland North and Rodney up to Wellsford. This move doubles to free another coordinator, currently covering in part, Auckland’s north shore, so he can focus time on training the new Wellington Coordinator later in the year. It’s a carefully orchestrated plan to resource the expansion of Big Buddy in the critical area of people.
Our work is very people centred, getting the right people in the right place with good training and support is crucial if we are to expand our services and keep up the quality for those services. In my darkest moments I sometimes think it would have been a lot easier to design our programme along more mechanical lines that did not depend on the quality of the people providing the service, a kind of tick the box fill out the form, look at the DVD approach. These darker moments pass (quite quickly!) when I remember we are in the business of real human relationships with all the complexity and mysteries they encompass. I remind myself that our core business of fostering long term and profound relationships requires a lot of relationship skills from us. It requires us to put ourselves on the line and that is not done lightly or without support.
One another note I am very pleased to report one of the mini World of Difference winners for this year, Rachel Harrison, has elected to work with us. She will be doing some much needed work on our communications databases, getting them all into a more professional setup. I’m looking forward to working with Rachael and am honoured she picked us. Another supporter of ours, Travis Field, has given us a free ad in his new Auckland magazine, Weekend, worth $1000. Great stuff, it’s the first time we have had an ad in a glossy mag so I’ll be interested in the response!. Travis will also be helping me develop the Big Buddy Business Supporter idea with his long experience in business and is extensive business contacts.
I am getting closer to finding our man in Wellington and taking the time to do this well. Interviewing a few people so far I found many who would have been great coordinators in Auckland but I need someone who also has mana to represent us in Wellington. So not only am I looking for a man with good levels of emotional intelligence, good organisational skills and great relational abilities, he needs to have a solid mana as well. Oh well if you don’t shoot for the best you don’t get the best.
This month had Fathers day so I was asked to make a speech at the Waitakere City Council Fathering week launch, did an interview with John Tamihere and Willy Jackson on Radio Live and later an interview with Shine TV.
On Monday the 27th August we launched into the second programme with six boys from Police, CYFS, private referrals and WINZ and are currently into week 2 which is the military camp phase. The first week as is always is very taxing and they don’t like the first day or two but in the end they are now slowly coming around. Into week 2 they are doing really well, had a couple of eeling sessions they are learning to gut and clean eels and smoke them as well.
They have been abseiling and kayaking and what an awesome start having two of the boys from the previous course come and assist in this course as volunteers – they did an amazing job. The camp phase went pretty well and all the mums saw some amazing changes in their son’s attitudes and behaviours the real battle starts now when they are home in their environment with the same temptations and peers. I still believe this is a worthwhile cause and will continue on. We are in the process of becoming an accredited provider for CYFS so children who come from them will have funding attached which will help with our sustainability. Here’s hoping.
Ok I’d like to slow the year down now! How did we get to August?! At the risk of sounding like a broken record it’s been another huge month at EDEN. I had a fantastic trip to Melbourne to attend the Australia and New Zealand Academy for Eating Disorders conference. This meeting is attended by local clinicians, academics and community agencies so it’s a great networking opportunity and important for keeping up with the latest initiatives in the field like for example internet support for people with eating issues who live in remote areas without services. I presented a conference paper on the negative help-seeking experiences of women looking for support/treatment for bulimic-type problems. One of the key findings in my paper is that early intervention services are extremely important for those seeking support once they have identified an eating issue and this is a priority for EDEN.
While in Melbourne I also had a lengthy phone conversation with Julie from the Butterfly Foundation. This is an organisation that raises funds for eating disorder services in Australia and EDEN could learn a lot from their fundraising approach and successes. It is becoming clear that approaching corporates with a social conscience (like the Vodafone Foundation!) and wealthy/powerful individuals who are concerned about the rates of disordered eating in our communities, is really important alongside securing government money. Funding continues to be a concern for EDEN given that we are yet to secure a DHB contract to support our services into the future.
Of course all the organisation for EDEN’s Love Your Body Day was at fever pitch in August. I was busy confirming activities, media opportunities and job lists with AUT’s student PR team from Outside the Square. We also finalised a Love Your Body Day event and Cleo magazine held the celebrity shoot for our gorgeous tshirts (see photos below – I’ve been wearing mine everywhere!). Make sure you check out the tshirt spread in the Cleo October issue.
I am also very excited to announce that EDEN is holding a community mural painting event in Aotea Square on Wednesday October 17th between midday and 5pm. Make sure you get involved by wearing your Love Your Body Day tee and joining others who want to celebrate body diversity and raise awareness and funds for eating difficulties. We want to create a huge mural of ‘real beauty’ and will have a massive canvass available for you to contribute your body positive images and messages to. Buy your tshirt now.
Other EDEN activities this month have included finalising EDEN’s counselling service development requirements and securing a contractor to do this policy, procedures, documentation, and systems work. I have also had some input into the development of EDEN’s annual report and into the latest newsletter. To see EDEN’s August newsletter click here. Two other August projects were 1) accessing research and information on eating issues and pregnancy/maternity to provide EDEN’s youth worker Deb with information to develop a body image workshop for teen mum’s and 2) investigating the feasibility of beginning a support group for parents/partners/carers of people with disordered eating problems.
I’m out of room so see you next month!
August was another busy month for Every Child Counts.
We continued the development of a model for a cross-party parliamentary caucus for children and consulted with MPs about how the caucus might work.
With a lot of publicity about child abuse cases, we issued a media statement and responded to a number of offers from help from new Every Child Counts supporters.
We marked the closing of local body and DHB candidacy with a media statement and with a list of questions we’re encouraging voters to ask of candidates.
We began consultations with external people about our proposed Speakers’ Bureau.
At its Project Team and Steering Group meetings on 9 August, Every Child Counts considered a formal policy on child participation in our project, as well as our public positions on some important political issues.
I attended a forum with parents at a school in Wellington to talk about the change to section 59 of the Crimes Act, which made the use of force for the purposes of correction illegal. My presentation was made jointly with a staff member from SKIP (Strategies with Kids, Information for Parents).
We started developing a list of potential new candidates for membership on the Every Child Counts Steering group and Project Team.
And we continued our preparations for our annual conference and awards ceremony on 5 September.
September already!! Feels like it was August just yesterday. How time flies. Our Show case Desire 2 Dream has taken full flight and it’s been great to work with such an awesome team of dancers. We have chosen 20 for each section, Junior Varsity and Adult. So 60 all up. Also featuring in Desire 2 Dream are some of the top dance Crews and Companies in NZ. It will be an event not to be missed. Check out www.dziah.com for latest updates.
In the last month have done a bit of travel to Wellington and Hamilton connecting with other hiphop Dance companies to bring together our dance community in building a stronger network for NZ hiphop. There is a lot of emphasis on ballet, contemporary and jazz. Why not Hiphop? It’s the fastest growing craze over the years since the 80s, Ballet has been around for 100s of years before you would see it on stage and hiphop only thirty! Plenty of years to develop. People would rather take a hiphop class than any other because not only does it help confidence in projecting yourself but health and fitness, and more importantly anyone can do it, any shape or size.
I’ve been busy with helping dance teams and schools for various competitions throughout the North Island and love to support teams making an impact in NZ using dance. I motivate and talk to many classes about dance and how it has helped me to connect with people and how we can impact the next generation to carry it on when we are gone. Have had a lot of positive feedback from teachers and continue to keep those classes running.
Another highlight of the month was my all girls Development Crew (Dcypher) took out 2 Dance competitions in one week. The Source Dance competition which was judged by a few famous Americans (Andre Fuentes ,Chris Jones) involved with films like Stomp the Yard, You got Served ,The Longest Yard and a long list of other dance credits. Dcypher also won the Off the Hook Open sections; 1st place Dance Performance, 1st place in the Battles and 1st place Overall. What a big week for the girls and they have been working real hard. This was there first ever competition.
I would like to say a big thank you to Vodafone yet again. We had some amazing volunteers that helped over a period of time. A big thank you to Issac , Ruth and Soane for your contribution to our project.
