COMMUNITY WORK
WORKING WITH OUR COMMUNITY
Our Members’ skills, experience and knowledge is extensive, and this is reflected in our local community support. Our primary focus is to help other community groups such as Schools, Play Centres, Preschools, Churches, and our Elderly Community with their projects.
We also have members who are skilled and available to help with both Community projects and assisting community members in fixing their pre-loved items.
We welcome other charitable organisation's to approach us, though if you’re not sure if your project is something we can help with, feel free check out our project acceptance guide or just come along and have a chat with us, phone John on 027 4343 576.
To help pay for our overheads and cost of materials, we ask for a KOHA (donation).
A community project undertaken at May Road School
May Road School has a significant range of cultures within its roll, and the school wanted to be able to show how these cultures can journey together to get to a place of shared learning.
Two members of our shed, Chris Stuart and Don Hook took upon themselves to solve this. The Waka (canoe) demonstrates a means of transport, and the Whare (meeting house) is where the learning can take place.
Waka Name: “He waka eke noa” is a Māori proverb (whakataukī) meaning "we are all in this canoe together," emphasizing unity, shared journey, and mutual support through challenges, like paddling a waka (canoe) towards a common goal. It signifies collective responsibility and shared experience, promoting working together to overcome difficulties and achieve success, as everyone shares the same voyage.
It means for the school we are one, our journey we share together, we mutually gain support through our teaching environment. We continue to travel together towards our common goal to succeed, to overcome the challenges and difficulties that our mixed cultures have collectively brought, and from that we have learnt, importantly, to learn together, so we can leave as one, to make our own individual journeys to become valued citizens with in our community.
The Waka and Whare were both designed and hand built by the Members of our shed and are both situated at the school with the Waka being placed at the entrance to the school, and the Whare as a place to gather and learn.
The 12 Paddles that were made, represent the beliefs of the school
