Nerves Heighten as National Stage Looms

Nerves Heighten as National Stage Looms

Group nurturing enquiring minds will see Wairoa well-represented

Te Paea Whakatope and Naomi Wilson have just a few days to count down before they represent Wairoa’s volunteer community in Dunedin.

With the 2015 Trustpower National Community Awards about to kick off in the South Island, the Te Wairoa Pā Haka Festival Organising Committee representatives are confident the efforts of their volunteers will stand up well on stage.

Whakatope and Wilson will be taking the cultural and community well-being group head to head with the country’s best and brightest voluntary groups and organisations on a national stage of friendly competition, where they’ll showcase a model of volunteers succeeding with whanau engagement. Mayor Craig Little will also attend and support the Wairoa team.

The 2015 Trustpower National Community Awards will be held in Dunedin City this weekend (18-20 March). The competition brings together 25 groups from across 27 New Zealand districts and the Wellington region – all are Supreme Winners of last year’s Trustpower Community Awards, a programme run in partnership with local councils across the country.

The volunteers behind the Te Wairoa Pā Haka Festival came out on top at the Trustpower Wairoa District Community Awards last year, beating out 20 other local voluntary organisations for their efforts to increase community engagement at all age levels and across the cultural spread of marae and hapu within the Wairoa rohe (district).

Trustpower community relations representative Emily Beaton says the inclusiveness and goals to foster positive relationships throughout the district is admirable and is getting to the heart of what Wairoa is about.

“The Wairoa Pā Haka Festival seems, judging by its popularity, to be servicing a need in this community.

“The tangible goals the organising committee set around drawing whanau back into the district, promoting positive relationships and placing such a high value on the people’s culture is what sets this group apart for me,” she said.

Joining the Wairoa contingent at the National Awards will be a host of similarly dedicated volunteers representing districts from the Far North, right down to Stewart Island in Southland.

In between a weekend of sight-seeing and networking, Whakatope and Wilson will give an eight minute presentation on what the group has achieved and try to convince a panel of independent judges they deserve the title of 2015’s Trustpower National Community Award Supreme Winner. The groups will be judged on their presentations, along with a 1,000 word summary of the organisation.

This year on the judging panel the Trustpower community relations team will be hosting TVNZ’s Good Sorts presenter Haydn Jones and Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector, Honourable Jo Goodhew along with several other community and Trustpower representatives.

Presentations will take place over most of Saturday at the historic Otago Boys’ High School, with an awards dinner to announce award recipients that evening at the Dunedin Town Hall. The Trustpower National Community Awards Supreme Winner will take home a custom-made trophy, $4,000 in prize money, a framed certificate and a$1,000 Exult volunteer sector consultancy voucher. The Runner Up will receive $2,500 in prize money, a $500 Exult voucher and a framed certificate.

“Whether or not this group takes home a prize, Wairoa’s representatives and their army of volunteers back home have already achieved so much. The weekend is about more than placing. What they have already built for the cultural and interpersonal well-being of this community - that’s what is really important,” Beaton said.

ENDS

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