March 2007 - Richard Aston

I'm writing this late Friday night surrounded by the chaos of semi packed travel bags and last minute visits from friends as I get ready to fly off to the UK tomorrow. As I mentioned in my last blog I'm off to present Big Buddy to a national conference in the UK and talked to lots of mentoring organisations over there. Our work in Wellington continues, still have not found our man down there but we are finally getting some very interesting applications for the Wellington coordinator position we have been advertising for 5 weeks. I spent some time down there last week meeting with the CEO of Barnardos, Murray Edridge. Murray is very keen to support the expansion of Big Buddy, was quite inspired hearing how we work and what values drive us. I spent time with Jenny from Barnardos who showed me their new community hub building, an old nunnery , it could well be the place we take office space in, the hub will be filled with other agencies working with young people so our man down there will have plenty of colleagues. While this is going on we are talking to several groups up in North Rodney about setting up a Big Buddy branch serving their communities of Wellsford, Warkworth etc. Actually this started with a call from Jonathon Williams the Youth Aid Officer for the area, he see's a big need for us up there and we are happy to do what is necessary to help out. It's all unfolding as it should, Big Buddy is rolling out and I'm rocking off to the UK to make us world famous in New Zealand.

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