Every child deserves to play

Latisha Freemantle (aged 7) wondered why she only saw healthy children with no disabilities playing in playgrounds. She asked her grandmother, “why?” So began a search. She sent a letter to the Mayor of Porirua Nick Leggett.

Latisha and her grandmother then came to the Rotary Club of Plimmerton to talk to the club and research began.

The Variety Club in conjunction with various charities have put a Liberty Swing which holds a wheelchair in many cities throughout New Zealand. Other Liberty Swings can be found around the world, many thanks to the help of local Rotary Clubs.

The Exeter Mencap Society worked with their local Exeter Rotary Clubs and other charity organisations to develop an “all inclusive playground”. Local Trustee Miriam Guard said that the Rotary clubs have been very helpful, including planting purple crocuses which they donated as part of the international campaign to eradicate polio.

In New Zealand there are only 26 of these wheelchair swings. Many have a $10 charge for use, whereas others are only available for special occasions.

It’s almost impossible for a child in a wheelchair to negotiate the bark chips that are in many playgrounds in order to reach, or even touch, some of the play equipment.

Plimmerton Rotary also researched other playgrounds overseas. In Dothan, Alabama the local Rotary Clubs teamed with business, council and the community to build ‘The Rotary Miracle Playground’.

In Tallahassee, Florida a similar type of partnering resulted in a huge park called Tom Brown Park and playground. It’s size is outside our wildest dreams in Porirua, however we believe that a start should be made.

Latishia, her mother and representatives of both Rotary Clubs of Porirua Sundown and Plimmerton visited the Mayor who told them that Porirua City Council is very supportive and has already started work on revitalising playgrounds around the city because 25% of Porirua citizens are children, and just over 20% of people in the city have some sort of disability.

Undertaking improvements is very expensive so it will take some time.

The two Rotary Clubs are currently working together and see this project as potentially a cluster-wide opportunity as well as a long-term partnership with the council and other interested groups. We all want to achieve the best outcome for Porirua city.

Visit http://plimmertonrotary.org.nz/articles+Index/Every+child+deserves+to+play to read the full story. 

 

 By Adrienne Murray, Rotary Club of Plimmerton

Te Ara Piko Pathway Award a Natural!

The Te Ara Piko Pathway around the Pauatahanui Inlet is rapidly becoming a highly awarded project, In November 2011 both Plimmerton Rotary and the Porirua City Council won the Recreation Volunteers Award in the Encore Awards.

In 2012 Porirua City Council received a Highly Commended Award for Excellence in Compliance for Te Ara Piko. This award recognised Greater Wellington consent holders who exceeded their compliance requirements to reduce or avoid adverse effects on the environment.

On Monday 19 August 2013, Plimmerton Rotary won the Heritage and Environment Category of the Wellington Airport Regional Community Awards for Te Ara Piko Pathway at a prestigious awards ceremony held at Pataka in Porirua.

 

The idea of having a pathway around the Pauatahanui Inlet was first mooted in 2000.  It was not until 2005 that any visible work was evident and the vision became a project known as the Te Ara Piko Pathway.

The project has been developed jointly between Plimmerton Rotary and the Porirua City Council with both partners being enthusiastic supporters from the start.

Ron Lucas, President of Plimmerton Rotary noted how special it was to have been nominated for this award by Porirua City and that, by receiving it, the work of both project partners was recognised.

Around the world, Rotary is involved in projects that are designed to make a difference to people’s lives in all sorts of ways. This project is unique in that it is jointly undertaken by a territorial authority and Rotary with the objective of giving everyone access to a beautiful part of Porirua City for generations to come.

There is a long way to go on this project as it works its way around the Pauatahanui Inlet but already the completed sections are proving to be well used and as the Pathway mellows, the attention paid to heritage and environmental values as recognised by the Wellington Airport Regional Community Award 2013 is becoming increasingly evident.

To celebrate, several Rotarians, Inner Wheelers and even a small person, gathered at the project’s Ration Creek nursery for the final planting of the year. Several were deployed to Ration Point to plant more Oi-Oi grasses and release those already planted.

While others busied themselves at the nursery itself, weeding around the young plants that will be ready for planting out next autumn.

Hard work like this deserves its reward so a morning tea break was very welcome.

And although it was tea and coffee and not champagne, there was a moment of celebration when mugs were raised to the extraordinary vision of having the Te Ara Piko Pathway completed around the Pauatahanui Inlet.

 

Written by Phillip Reidy

The Building Business Continues to thrive

Many of the longer-serving members of the Plimmerton Rotary Club will remember Randall Shaw as an achiever and genial member, known to greet each day with a welcoming smile.

He was a well-respected Rotarian, a Past President, a Paul Harris Fellow, and a recipient of The Four Avenues of Service award.  And he was a builder with a reputation for building quality well-crafted homes.

Randall was known to be enthusiastic in supporting the development of future skilled tradesmen in the Building Trade. When he passed away some 5 years ago the Randall Shaw Memorial Award was set up in his memory to endorse the values he held dear, and lived by, all his life.

The purpose of the Award is to reward a first year Building Apprentice from Whitireia Training Centre who demonstrates a clearly recognised ‘total package of value’. These values were to be shown by a first year Building Apprentice, recommended by the Trade Tutors. The Award includes a $1000 voucher to purchase trade tools from Brights Mitre 10. Bright’s have been a supporter and co-sponsor of this award since the outset. 

 

In life, significant goals of achievement are assisted by teamwork and good organisation. This year it was decided to make two separate Awards as the standard of the applicants was so high that it proved too difficult to choose between them. One Award went to Raydon Moore-Feuu from Titahi Bay and one went to Mitch Jago from Tawa, pictured above. These two men have a strong personal drive and ability and have embraced the apprenticeship system. They will never forget their opportunity to work in established, competent businesses where they can gain real hands-on experience. The dedicated team from Whitireia has supported them throughout, passing on the all-important technical trade knowledge over the length of their apprenticeships.

In making these Awards, Plimmerton Rotary said that it was right to acknowledge the drive and discipline of Rayden and Mitch that has brought them this distinction at the start of their working lives. The Club wishes them well and trusts that the tools will be put to good use in the years ahead.

 

By Michael Parker

One case of polio anywhere is a threat everywhere

“One case of polio anywhere is a threat everywhere” emphasised d’Arcy Lunn, Global Poverty Project advisor and ambassador for the End of Polio Campaign, in a dynamic and thought-provoking speech on March 19 at The Rotary Club of Plimmerton in Wellington, New Zealand.

Polio is our common enemy. It usually affects children under the age of five.

223 cases of polio were reported in 2012, only a little more than one-third of the 650 cases reported in 2011. So far this year only 16 cases have been reported compared with 36 cases for the same time last year. In more good news, India marked its second year without polio on January 13, 2013.

The annual incidence of polio has decreased more than 99% since the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was launched in 1988 when about 350,000 children were infected each year in 125 endemic countries. The wild polio virus is now endemic in only three countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Yet, in 2010 we saw the resurgence of polio in six countries, many that had been polio-free for long periods of time. If polio exists anywhere in the world it is a threat to everyone, everywhere. Containment of polio is not an option. Eradication is the only solution.

Without a commitment from the global community to immunize every last child, this debilitating disease could start to spread again with a vengeance. All it takes is two drops of vaccine.

Plus financial support. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently donated US$100 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative through his charitable foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has contributed more than US$1.5 billion to fight polio and, in the past three decades, Rotarians around the world have contributed more than US$1.2 billion to end this scourge. Since the initiative began in 1988, 2.5 billion children around the world have been immunised.

Each one of us can help. We can help by encouraging all the parents we know to immunise their child. And we can donate to Rotary’s PolioPlus programme. Go to http://www.endpolio.org/


Submitted by:  Wendy Betteridge, Rotary Club of Plimmerton www.plimmerton.rotarysouthpacific.org

The world’s their oyster

Maddie with the Brazilian exchange student, Alexandra Flores,

living in the same town in Germany at the language camp

organised by District 1860 for the exchange students

who arrived in August 2012.

Two International Youth Exchange students sponsored by the Rotary Clubs of Plimmerton and Porirua Sundown in Wellington, NZ have just returned from their year overseas.

 

Madeleine White returned from Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.  Maddie had a wonderful time enjoying the many sights of Germany and further afield around Europe whilst studying at a German secondary school.  ‘While it is great to be home, I am hoping to get back to Germany soon and travel more abroad in the future’ she says. 

 

Learning to live with other families who speak a different language can be interesting and sometimes testing, but the chance to be immersed in the language helped Maddie to develop her German. She is now fluent in both the spoken and written language, and has grown to love Germany, the culture and people there.

 

Maddie is keen to stay in touch with the new friends she has made, not only those from Germany but also the other exchange students she met from around the world and also her host families.  ‘It was a special feeling to be an ambassador for New Zealand, which is the furthest country from Germany on earth’, said Maddie.

 



Georgina (centre) with Shaylin (Canada) a
nd Renwick (America),

two other Exchange students,

 trying on kimonos at a textile store

Georgina Paskell also just returned from a year in Aichi in Japan. She spent her year living with several different host families in Nagoya, Japan whilst she attended Aichi High School, a private Buddhist school. ‘I really enjoyed making many friends, both at school and through Rotary’, said Georgina. ‘My highlights were my school trip to Hokkaido, taking part in my school festival and attending a popular fireworks festival with the other Rotary exchange students’.

‘It will be hard to find a better experience than this exchange’, she Georgina.  She wants Japan to be a part of her future. Whether she lives in New Zealand or Japan, she expects the Japanese language to be an important part of her career.

 

And one student sponsored by the Rotary Club of Plimmerton just left for her year abroad.

 

Mihi Gardiner-Parata left Wellington to make her way to Doullens (two hours north of Paris) where she’ll spend the next twelve months. The area where Mihi will be living is in the heart of the cemeteries around the Somme where so many battles took place during the First World War.

 




Mihi, centre, being farewelled by her mother,

Hekia and sister, Rakai.

At the airport, Mihi said, ‘I am very excited but haven’t thought much yet past the two days I’ll be spending in Los Angeles with the other exchange students’. Mihi’s sister, Rakai was at the airport to farewell her sister and to give her some last-minute tips. She came back to New Zealand in January 2012 after spending a year in Araraquara in Brazil.

 

-      By Wendy Betteridge, Rotary Club of Plimmerton, Wellington, NZ

Recognition for Plimmerton Rotary and Porirua City Council

Greater Wellington Regional Council, the Department of Conservation’s Wellington Hawke’s Bay Conservancy and the Wellington Hawke’s Bay Conservation Board developed the Encore Awards to honour individuals, groups, school communities and landowners whose sustained commitment to environmental restoration, biodiversity and conservation is making the Wellington region a better place to live.

 

Planting October 2012: Rotarian volunteers hard at work
planting Oioi (Apodasmia similis). Photo: Graham Craig

Both the Rotary Club of Plimmerton and Porirua City Council won the Recreational Volunteers Award for their work on the Te Ara Piko Pathway around the Pauatahanui Inlet in the 2011 Encore Awards. Work began in 2000. 

 

The 2012 Awards Ceremony was held on December 3 in the Wellington City Art Gallery. Porirua City Council received a Highly Commended Award for Excellence in Compliance for Te Ara Piko.

 

There are seven award categories. The Excellence in Compliance Award recognises Greater Wellington consent holders who exceed their compliance requirements to reduce or avoid adverse effects on the environment.

 

The Judges’ Citation states ‘The Porirua City Council has continued to make good progress on developing Te Ara Piko. The project has been supported by the Rotary Club of Plimmerton who have undertaken considerable work in partnership with the Council to make this project a success’.

potential for adverse effects from placing a man-made structure by the Inlet, and they’ve done their best to avoid the impact of the construction of the Walkway on the Inlet, while ensuring the Walkway is in harmony with its surroundings.

 

To manage the impacts of the Walkway’s construction, disturbance of the Inlet has been minimised, machinery has been located away from the Inlet and wood was cut off site. Plants have been successfully translocated from the nursery set up by the Rotary Club and problems such as erosion minimised.

 

The Council consulted widely with the community over the years of the project, and their efforts have significantly enhanced the environment and created a fantastic amenity for the community. This project continues to raise awareness about the significance of the Pauatahanui Inlet and the threats to it.

 

- District 9940 Newsletter January 2013 page 7

Tooting for Tucker for Christmas

UPCOMING: Christmas is coming.

For some it’s a very happy time of year. For others it can be a time of desperation and despair. You can help to make sure that every family in Porirua has enough food to make Christmas a happy occasion.

On Tuesday 4th, Wednesday 5th, Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th December Big Red and Yellow Fire Engines will be cruising the streets of Whitby between 5.30 and 7.30, tooting for tucker.

This initiative will be taking place simultaneously throughout the area but the fire engines cruising through Whitby will be from the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade and will be followed by cars and trailers, driven by Plimmerton Rotarians.

(Photo) Snr Firefighter Johnny Johnson, Rotarian Wendy Betteridge, Station Officer Tony Satorius and Snr Station Officer Dave Anderson of the Plimmerton Volunteer Fire Brigade prepare to Toot for Tucker
Photo by Derek Paterson

They will be knocking on doors and seeking items of non-perishable food for the Salvation Army Food Bank in Porirua. If you haven’t got any food items to give, then you can donate cash and they will buy food with your donation.

Please be ready to donate. When you go shopping in the next couple of weeks, slip a few extra items into your basket, items that will help to stock the shelves at the Food Bank.
Things like tins and cans of meat and fish, baked beans, cereals, pastas, jars of jams and spreads, plastic pots of fruit – anything that won’t perish. No fresh food please.

We look forward to seeing you. And if you want to come and help us to collect, then ring Mike Scott on 2336556 and let him know.

www.plimmerton.rotarysouthpacific.org

Police Recruits get some unusual training

Seven Police Recruits had some unusual crowd control practice and training experience on 17 November.

Recruits Buck Raines and Benjamin Luders endeavour to keep Roger Robati, aged 5 from Cannons Creek School, under crowd control with Recruit Michelle Brough in the background
Photo by Elizabeth Taylor

Forty-five children from Decile 1 schools in Porirua East were picked up by coach to attend the annual Christmas Party which is put on by The Plimmerton Rotary Club at The Royal New Zealand Police College in Porirua.

On arrival the children were greeted by the seven recruits and two instructors from Kelly Sports who provided some high activity games on the lawn. It was wonderful to see the Police Recruits totally involved with the children. They all participated in the games with equal enthusiasm and disregard for the rules.

Recruits Buck Raines and Benjamin Luders endeavour to keep Roger Robati, aged 5 from Cannons Creek School, under crowd control with Recruit Michelle Brough in the background
Photo by Elizabeth Taylor.

After burning up heaps of energy, the children were entertained by Harry the Clown, who had the children, the recruits and the adults laughing and shouting back on demand.
Wholesome food was produced, BBQ sausages, hot chips, drinks, ice cream and jellies. This food was quickly devoured and everyone had a new burst of energy to welcome Father Christmas, who arrived in all his glory with a present for every child. Presents were soon opened to shrieks of delight.

Father Christmas throws the lollies while
Plimmerton President Bob Austin and Recruit Manu Heketa look on
Photo by Elizabeth Taylor

Father Christmas delighted everyone by conducting a lolly scramble which concluded the party. The coach arrived to return the children safely to their homes.

The Plimmerton Rotary Club sincerely thanks not only the teachers who selected the children to attend but also the Police Recruits and the Kelly Sports Instructors who gave up their time to make a real contribution to the success of this great day for very special kids.


More photos on https://www.dropbox.com/sh/exh8gqwfo48drh3/KnFRrinZ4i


www.plimmerton.rotarysouthpacific.org