Our chairman Chris Livesey had a busy time with groups visiting Manawa Karioi lately. We are really happy with the recent community engagement as it aligns with our mission statement. Here is a report that was written by Chris Livesey about the busy week.
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Last Thursday teachers brought 85 children from Sacred Heart Cathedral School in Thorndon for a visit as part of their learning about the environment. They all arrived in a double-decker bus, I gave them a talk about Bruce, the marae and Manawa Karioi and then they went off to walk around Te Ahi Kaa. At the end of my talk, I was told that the children had been raising funds for us and they presented us with a donation of $100.
On Friday a group of Third Form Rongotai College students and three teachers came to do volunteer work on the student's annual Social Action Day - I put them to widening the top section of Whakaturanga and then a section of Moemoea towards the Golf Course. This is the third year that Rongotai College students have come to us on their Social Action Day.
On Saturday, I had 5 boys for 2 hours doing volunteer work as part of earning their Duke of Edinburgh award - they did track maintenance work on the track called Wawata.
On Sunday, I had a group of students (and their lecturer, Rebecca Priestley) from Victoria University. They came as part of the new Sustainability course that Rebecca is running. We did a bit of track widening and vegetation trimming on Union Road, some weeding of the new plantings around Greens Lookout and some track maintenance on Wawata.
When setting up the visit, Rebecca had said that they would like to give us a koha and said that the easiest thing for them was to give a gift voucher - I said that a gift voucher for fuel would be very useful. At the end of the day, Rebecca gave us a $100 fuel gift card for the scrub bar that we use to mow the tracks to keep them easily passable.