May 2002 - Hilary Price

Can you believe it – we are still painting the house! Those finishing touches - if you were to look at the quality – well – the most important thing is that every brush and roller stroke has been executed with love from every awesome team member! The house is starting to look fantastic – you’re in for a treat at the opening next month!! Speaking of which – our pocket Atlas and Hercules, Luke and Norm, removed the old playground, carting massive blocks of concrete into the tramp pit. Bay Scrap Metals were the knights in shining armour who have carted away the fossils, gratis! Fotheringhame Construction gave us the fill for our tramp-pit-converted-into-sandpit and the wooden frame for it was built. Talk about community! We started work on renovating the kitchen; completed flattening the field (a Bobcat was the final victor) and sowed the seed. We installed shelving in our storeroom, now we can get started packing away our donated goods. We painted the kitchen; got quotes for fireproofing the house with a sprinkler system and Kim and her gifted team continue to turn the garden into an oasis!

I continue to attend on going training with CYFS – Communication and Conflict Resolution; Permanency; and Legal and Access issues. Very informative, continuing to build a good foundation for the functioning of the homes.

NZ Woman’s Weekly featured an article about us. Bay News (a local weekly paper) also gave us a great write up. Phone ringing hot, here we go ….! Funding successes –yippee and enormous gratitude to the Bay of Plenty Community Trust who awarded us $24k (the biggest award for this round) toward the purchase of a van for the children and operating expenses for the first year. Have also received funds for IT equipment for the children, and for fencing.

Highlight this month would definitely be our meeting with Mayor Jan Beange. We spent half an hour sharing with her about the dire situation for children at risk and were invited to attend Council Chambers that same afternoon where they were discussing (God-incidentally!) Community Funding Policy. I was given opportunity to address Council about this – those moments in history when you just have to do what you have to do … and you do!

This month I’ve realized that the baby is born!! And just as with any newborn, it’s 24-7…. Bags under the eyes, constant attention, always in your thoughts … everyday is different, challenging and awesome!?

Hilary

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