Get Inspired by Other Volunteers
Looking After the Blade
It’s Conservation Week this week, and all over the Western Bay of Plenty volunteers are out in all weather laying [...]
Kura Kai keeping families fed
Staff at SociaLink and Volunteering Services turned into chefs for a couple of days last week to provide meals [...]
Skyla helps the next generation of rowers
Skyla Still is at school at Ōtumoetai College, but she’s already volunteering her time to help the next generation of [...]
Making the most of their abilities
At Casita’s shop in Greerton, four young workers in their twenties are taking their lunch break. They’re all volunteers [...]
Mel pitches in when emergency strikes
When the water started rising at Waihī Beach last month, local RSA manager and community volunteer Mel Gearon was [...]
Lalangi turns volunteering into a career
In her native Sri Lanka, Lalangi was a quantity surveyor in construction working in a high-pressure environment when [...]
Looking After the Blade
It’s Conservation Week this week, and all over the Western Bay of Plenty volunteers are out in all weather laying traps and ensuring native birds and flora can survive. Conservation volunteer John Rowlandson spends hours each week trapping “the baddies” - stoats, possums, rats, feral cats - to protect his favourite place, The Blade at the end of Whakamārama Road, 24km northwest of Tauranga. He’s a member of Friends of the Blade, a volunteer group formed to develop a pest-free zone around the Pā Kererū walking track and the rest area. The area is named after a massive bulldozer blade [...]
Kura Kai keeping families fed
Staff at SociaLink and Volunteering Services turned into chefs for a couple of days last week to provide meals for Kura Kai as their contribution to National Volunteer Week.In four teams they cooked up a tuna bake, pork ragu, spaghetti carbonara and butter chicken, making 48 meals for Kura Kai, with ingredients paid for by corporates which work at their headquarters at The Kollective - accountants William Buck, Kanuka Wellbeing and Leadership, The Kollective and Isthmus. Founder Makaia Carr said Kura Kai has 39 schools and 1000 volunteers, and has donated 40,000 meals to schools to distribute. These meals [...]
Skyla helps the next generation of rowers
Skyla Still is at school at Ōtumoetai College, but she’s already volunteering her time to help the next generation of young rowers.At 17, she’s been with the rowing club for four years, and enjoys her sport so much she’s one of a group of young rowers who turn up every Sunday afternoon to take younger rowers aged between about eight and 12 years to show them the ropes. “It’s fun, and then we have our own training straight afterwards.”The children are all learning to row, starting their sport on the Wairoa River, and many will go on to become more [...]
Making the most of their abilities
At Casita’s shop in Greerton, four young workers in their twenties are taking their lunch break. They’re all volunteers at the shop, one or two days a week, and they all have an intellectual disability, either global developmental delay or Down Syndrome. And they love their work. The shop was set up in a former pharmacy, conveniently just down from the supermarket by Charrissa Taylor of the Casita Community, which provides somewhere for young people with special needs who have left school to find a purpose. Maja Scott, 24, loves her work one day a week in the shop. [...]
Mel pitches in when emergency strikes
When the water started rising at Waihī Beach last month, local RSA manager and community volunteer Mel Gearon was ready to rescue flooded residents - and give them a hot meal and a place to rest. It was raining hard on May 29 at the beach when Mel had a call from a friend about 2pm saying it was starting to flood. Mel is a trained volunteer firefighter so she raced to the station where they were getting call after call from anxious residents. Their first callout was to people trapped in a flooded car, but an off-duty firefighter [...]
Lalangi turns volunteering into a career
In her native Sri Lanka, Lalangi was a quantity surveyor in construction working in a high-pressure environment when she and her husband decided to try a different country and culture. New Zealand seemed like the ideal place, quiet and calmer than Sri Lanka. They arrived in 2015 and lived in Auckland for several years, focused on finding her husband a job in IT. Lalangi concentrated on setting up their home while taking a break after her busy working life in Sri Lanka and visiting to help and support two of her Sri Lankan friends with their children, cooking [...]