2 February 2016

City’s social agenda set to roar into action

An innovative partnership with Wellington Rugby is being proposed to assist Wellington City Council better deliver their social agenda.

The partnership will help promote council’s community programmes to rejuvenate neighbourhoods, address health issues, prevent homelessness and deliver a smokefree Wellington. Council would have access Wellington Rugby marketing resources via the partnership.

The proposal will be submitted to council as part of determining its annual activities from 1 July this year.

Councillor Paul Eagle said the partnership would see the council working with the Wellington Rugby’s 10 representative sides, 9 of which are amateur and 1 professional side, and 6,500 players from the 8 clubs based in the Wellington City Council boundary area.

“The council cannot solve our social challenges alone. We need to re-think how we connect with those people who need our support most – this is an innovative way to reach disadvantaged groups.”

The proposal will ask councillors to consider funding of $250k for the proposal.

The partnership could include having the highly popular Absolutely Positively Wellington logo on the jersey of 5 of its representative sides, including the Wellington Pride and Wellington Lions.

Wellington Rugby Chief Executive Steve Rogers said forging a closer working relationship with the council would have wide ranging benefits for the community.

“We see obvious value in the Absolutely Positively Wellington logo being on our jerseys, but the commercial element is not the major driver.

“This relationship is about how we use sport, in this case rugby, and our local community leaders to support council initiatives that address important social issues such as obesity, alcohol abuse, graffiti and sideline behaviour.

“There is a real opportunity to align the sort of messages and leadership we value in our rugby clubs with the work council is already doing in the community. Together we believe we can make an impact well beyond the white lines of our rugby fields.”

The Wellington Lions have consistently been one of the most watched provincial teams on television and can deliver important social messages to a wide audience.

“Having the logo on the jersey would provide a vehicle to promote the partnership –any money generated from the partnership with the council would go directly back into community rugby programmes, not to the professional game” says Mr Rogers.

Councillor Eagle said no rates money would go toward Wellington Rugby’s professional arm.

The logo was trialled on the jerseys at the recent sevens central regions tournament in Levin and again at the nationals in Rotorua.

“Players loved wearing the jersey and the partnership concept has been well received by other stakeholders.”

“We already work with a number of central government agencies, social service providers and community groups – they have a number of messages already in place which together we can leverage,” says Councillor Eagle.

Council is currently developing a raft of strategies designed to sharpen its social development approach with a social strategy, resilience strategy and sport strategy on the policy development agenda.

A workshop with council’s community services team and Wellington Rugby was held last week to flesh out the proposal.

Wellington rugby officials will be updating Wellington City Councillors at tomorrow’s Community, Sport and Recreation Committee meeting beginning at 9.30am. It will take place in council’s Committee room 1, 101 Wakefield Street.

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