Saturday, 2 June 2012

Outstanding beauty available for all

The Pauatahanui Inlet is aptly named ‘The Jewel in the Crown of Porirua City’.


Porirua City, about half an hour north of Wellington in New Zealand, is an area that is home to some of the richest and some of the poorest people in New Zealand. The Rotary Club of Plimmerton has dedicated itself to raising the bar for the poorer communities with projects such as Computers in Homes, Reading in Schools, stocking the Salvation Army Foodbank, organising annual Christmas parties for disadvantaged kids, and many more.

A major project for the club benefits the wider community, and this entails constructing a pathway, Te Ara Piko Pathway, around the Pauatahanui Inlet. The scale of this project is significant, so Plimmerton Rotary and the Porirua City Council have been working in partnership. The pathway runs along the northern edge of the inlet through native salt marshes and wetland habitat – a nationally important estuary.

Both the Rotary Club of Plimmerton and Porirua City Council were recently recognised for their work on the Te Ara Piko Pathway in the 2011 Encore Awards, co-hosted by the Department of Conservation, Wellington Hawke’s Bay Conservancy, Conservation Board and Greater Wellington Regional Council. The Encore Awards honour people going the extra mile to restore, protect and enhance nature and history, and enable others to enjoy it.

The Council has committed significant funds to the project and several organisations, including the New Zealand Walking Access Commission, and Trusts have also donated generously.

Club members advocated for the pathway and acted as project ambassadors, promoting it at festivals, and establishing their own nursery.

Councillor Denys Latham said that the partnership between the Council and the Plimmerton Rotary has been a successful one for many years.  “I congratulate Rotary and our Leisure Assets team for the great work they are doing. The club pushed hard for this pathway, beginning in 2000, and the Council had to respond.”

Rotary club members have assisted with fundraising and actively helped with revegetation plantings along the pathway.
More photos of the progress on the walkway are available on http://rotary.angnz.com/projects/pathway/index.htm