Immigration New Zealand, lawyers and travel agents will be returning to the Kia Kaha Queenstown Lakes hub for several sessions over two weeks to support those seeking immigration assistance.

These additional sessions will complement current ones already planned which include skills and retraining advice and well-being sessions.

A dedicated business employers’ session will run at 9.00am on Wednesday 8 July, followed by a community session at 1.00pm. On Thursday 9 July and Wednesday 15 July they will offer drop-in sessions to allow as many people as possible to access face to face support.

Well-being has also been identified as an important need for the entire community. So Fridays at the hub are dedicated as a chance for people to connect and recharge together with others. Jo O’Conner, Health Promotion Specialist from WellSouth is offering ‘a cuppa and a chat’ for anyone between 10.00am and 1.00pm on Fridays. Adam Chalmers will be running a ‘foundation of well-being’ workshop on Friday 10 June.

The skills and training sessions will continue to run with the support of Queenstown Resort College, Southern Institute of Technology, Otago Polytechnic and English language skills as a drop-in between 11.00am – 2.00pm Monday to Wednesday until 17 July when the hub will be paused while next steps are considered.

“We plan to sit down with everyone who has been involved in the Kia Kaha Queenstown Lakes hub and look at how we can continue supporting the community need. This means we need to pause the hub for a few weeks,” said Queenstown Lakes District Council’s Recovery Manager, Steve Batstone.

“The majority of the sessions held at the hub have been recorded so if you did miss out on attending a session, you can still access the information shared in these video resources on our website.”

So far, more than 1,000 people have been supported in person at the Kia Kaha Queenstown Lakes Hub and more than 9,000 have viewed the resources which are also available on our website.

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