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Bulletin Board May - June 2008FROM THE DESK OF ROGER EYNON Kia ora and welcome to the 9th edition of Bulletin Board. In this edition we celebrate the recent successes of our organisation locally and nationally. It has been a very busy time with many milestones such as the joint conference with Community Patrols taking place. We are virtually in the second half of the year and it's all gone by in a flash. So - where are we now and what's next for Neighbourhood Support? You can contact me on: roger.eynon@police.govt.nz or ddi - 04 470 7022. This Bulletin Board is designed to give you a brief update on how things are progressing with Neighbourhood Support throughout the country. PLEASE PASS IT ON TO YOUR NEIGHBOURHOOD SUPPORT CONTACTS. Welcome on BoardNo pun intended - since last I wrote, I have had the pleasure of welcoming 3 new District Delegates. Central District - Wendy Foreman has stepped up from the ranks to embrace the Delegate position and has immediately set about renewing communications between Neighbourhood Support members across the district. Wendy is a coordinator and volunteers at the Levin watch-house. She also has her hands full with other community works and is focused on making the neighbourhood a safer place to live in. Southern District - Sarah Hexamer has already had an informative article posted on our site and I don't need to say much more. I had the pleasure of meeting Sarah at the Conference and have noted her recent work with the media with great interest. Dunedin and Central District are in safe hands. Wellington - Alison Hobcraft is also stepping up from the ranks of Neighbourhood Support in Kapiti and is taking the post that Ron Clare is slowly withdrawing from to concentrate on Upper Hutt. The Wellington Delegate and Coordinator post is an important role and Kapiti based Alison is a welcome addition to our team. Current campaign - "TogetherNES"9th May onwards and update. NSNZ took the opportunity to work alongside Nescafe, who are running a "TogetherNES" campaign from May and it is envisaged that this will be a 3 year campaign focusing on renewing neighbourhood ties and relationships, thereby, reinvigorating community spirit. Communities will benefit from being both the nominators and beneficiaries of local projects. NSNZ has been viewed as an ideal partner to promote the benefits of community cohesion. District Co-ordinators received information packs so that they had a good understanding of the campaign in general. Visit http://www.nestle.co.nz/togethernes/ to have your chance to nominate a local project or even register you and your neighbour for a cash prize draw. Focus should be on things that get neighbours together and meeting each other - like street parties etc. It is well worthwhile them applying with a great, realistic, community idea. Click here to submit a project: https://www.nestle.co.nz/togethernes/project-form.aspx A reminder may be timely. It's all up for grabs. The campaign got off to a flying start with 4 radio interviews given by myself and also one by Sarah in Dunedin as part of her introduction to the community. I posted the media coverage summary on the national site and it made for interesting reading - purely community based newspapers - reaching a combined circulation of over 600,000 households. The publications and associations included New Zealand Press Association (media release), Daily News, Christchurch Weekend Press, Waikato Times, Manawatu Standard, NZ Listener (wow!) and Southland Times. There were many more although the audience reached by the radio coverage was impossible to judge. All in all, this has been an excellent partnership with Nescafe and the "TogetherNES" campaign is planned to continue to 2010. I have been invited to participate in the early stages of planning for the 2009 campaign. It would be great to see a successful Neighbourhood Support nominated project. ReportingMonitoring pilot - June 2008 Following on from this same topic in the last bulletin, Eastern and Bay of Plenty have been really helpful in putting the pilot in place within their districts. This is a crucial part of how NSNZ reports the good work that is being done. Willie and Barrie, respectively have been keen to demonstrate that it is possible to work the same way with an eye on the bigger picture. The pilot continues with Central and Canterbury currently considering how they can embrace it. I would like to emphasise that the consistent reporting measure is in households and that is how the Crime Prevention Unit and Police measure our success. Please be aware when completing your reporting statistics. Hamilton Field Day12th June 2008 I visited the event on one of its quieter days manly because I had to be in Auckland for the conference the following day. It was my first taste of a rural field day. I've never seen so many tractors and the community feeling was evident with entire families kitted out to be there for the entire day. I was there in my normal capacity and spent time with rurally based constables, Search and Rescue team members and other volunteers. The message was clear that Neighbourhood Support links are extremely important in the more isolated areas where there can be easy pickings for some and a large area to Police for those in the districts. I have managed to post rurally focused articles on the national website and hope to be able to contribute more as time goes on. Joint Training Conference - CPNZ & NSNZ13th - 15 June 2008 Well, it came and it went. That's the short story. The bigger and more important story is that this jointly held conference was ground breaking for a number of reasons. Both organisations co-exist and work to achieve the same goals - by reducing crime, the fear of crime and making communities safer. We do it in different ways but behind the scenes are very similar with good working relationships and support from NZ Police and Government. An excellent panel of speakers addressed the audience of 318 attendees - this was the maximum number that could attend and the organisers needed to halt registrations and disappoint those who had left it a little late. The previous Community Patrols New Zealand conference attracted some 200 attendees, so it was clear that there was a marked increase in attendance for a number of reasons. The venue, the Waipuna Hotel and Conference Centre was excellent and offered the facilities that were crucial to the success of the training part of the conference. Nine workshops were rolled out over the weekend and covered diverse topics such as CPNZ database, Funding, Establishing and Managing Volunteer Groups. The full programme has been posted on our site - www.ns.org.nz - and can be viewed in full. I was lucky enough to be chosen to present a Business Plan workshop - that on the face of it - sounded mundane. However, I addressed approximately 100 people over 3 sessions, with the end result being that I amassed a list of 75 email addresses and 2 postal addresses to receive further information on Business Plan tools. Perhaps not so mundane after all! I was overwhelmed with the response from both CPNZ and NS attendees and was reduced to a croaky voice by Sunday morning. The main speakers included:
Also - welcomes from:
Topics including cultural awareness, "P", tracking equipment and Eagle Police helicopter were presented to the entire audience in the main theatre. There were great opportunities for bonding with members of both organisations and my own contact list grew and grew over the weekend. The conference was closed by Robert Fowler, who was instated as the new Chairperson for CPNZ. We wish Robert all the best in his new role and hope to work closely with him in the near future. I personally would like to thank Ian Pilbrow and acknowledge that he will be continuing with his role on the board of CPNZ. Ian held his hand out to me even before I started with NSNZ and I can say that he continued in this vein whilst in Chair. Wow - a busy weekend all round and a legacy to work with. Great work by all involved in the organisation of this important event - being the Conference Committee - which included Neighbourhood Support's Joy Johnson and Carol Dixon. Congratulations to Manawatu Neighbourhood Support Co-ordinator Allan Muntz and committee chairman Sergeant Mike Lawton as they were both presented with an award at the conference in recognition of the huge upturn in numbers in membership in the last year. Workshop resource Following on from the conference, if anyone would like to know more about the Business Plan presentation, send me an email: roger.eynon@police.govt.nz - and please include your address in case your provider limits the amount of data coming in to your email box. Papatoetoe Neighbourhood Support - AGM21st June 2008 I met Pam from the reinvigorated Papatoetoe NS group at the conference and we had a good long talk about how things had progressed. They held their first AGM since their rejuvenation and elected their Chairperson - Colin Brown. Congratulations to Pamela Walford, Flora Butcher - both key Neighbourhood Support personnel and also to Nigel Roe and Grant Turvey for their Community Policing support. Next NSNZ Board meeting1 & 2 July 2008. This is the meeting postponed from 20 & 21May. Senior Citizens Advisory Council7th August 2008 Following on from our presentation to the Senior Citizens Advisory Committee, Morris Cheer (Community Support Manager, National Community Policing Group) and I have now been invited to address the inter-departmental meeting feeding into the Positive Aging Strategy. This is a frequently held forum and it is normally attended by 20 different central government agencies. It is quite something to be invited to address such a diverse audience of community focused representatives. Events listThis is where I would like to include your contributions to the bulletin. It would be wonderful to list all the local activities and initiatives that NS groups get involved with and put them here. So - get typing and tell me what is going to happen, when and where. When it's all done - let me know what the result was and I will post it as soon as I can. Good newsI've been regularly posting items on our website - so - keep them coming. Local group newsletters & E WatchFrom my visits so far, a frequent comment from members is that local group newsletters are a valuable source of information. I receive the odd one myself in my capacity as National Manager, but I know there are more out there, doing the rounds. So.......let me have a copy from time to time to keep me informed too. I do receive the E Watch electronic newsletter from New Plymouth and Taupo NS also provides a newsletter via email. Rotorua post out their newsletter, it has a good professional look to it and I get it delivered to my desk. You can subscribe to NZ Police Community Edition "10-1" by visiting http://www.police.govt.nz and follow the prompts or go straight to http://www.tenone.police.govt.nz/tenone/signup.htm NSNZ WebsiteWe are actively working to ensure that contacts and email routing are up to date. It does take a bit of maintenance to keep it correct and interesting. The site does reflect what is going on in the districts, how they do it and what the outcomes are. I also try and put a bit of best practice on there to help share what works well with all the groups around the country. We have a limited number of links to local NS group websites and now only have one page where all news is posted and the archived material is at the bottom of the page. Nice and tidy in one place. There are some new changes to be made and these will be done as soon as practically possible. Best practiceHow do we swap best practice? I hope it will be here as well as on the website. It may be that we take ideas from the good news stories or events list and results that are published, but feel free to offer gems that have a bearing on how we can do things better. If you are feeling left out because your story hasn't been included, simply send it in anyway. My aim is to share the activities of NSNZ around the country and let our audience know how we positively influence the community around us. I hope you have started to notice that the national site - www.ns.org.nz - carries frequent updates ranging from good news to best practice ideas. Please keep these coming! Thanks for reading and I trust you can pick something new up from this issue. I can now put faces to voices and emails after meeting so many people in Auckland and wish you all well for the coming (cold months). Heoi anō |
