Coordinating efforts to minimise our environmental impact

By Frances Hancock

This month Bronwen Turner, deputy chair of Manukau Harbour Restoration Society, Janine Nillesen, park ranger of Ambury Farm Park and leader of Friends of the Farm, and I (Frances Hancock) also of Friends of the Farm, met at Ruby Red café in Mangere Bridge to discuss how our organisations can work together (and with others) to maximise our shared commitment to caring for our enviornment – especially, the farm, foreshore and harbour.  Brian Pilkington, long-time resident and secretary of Mangere Bridge Residents and Ratepayers Association, sent his apologies and also expressed their support for this initiative.

The meeting builds on work currently underway by Friends of the Farm to foster a more “wastewise caring community”, and in particular to develop a community calendar of local events and opportunities for our growing number of community volunteers. Over the past couple of years we’ve been assisting various groups in the community with their events through our wastewise activities.  We’ve also been working with others to organise community working bees. We realise we need a more coordinated approach.

Bronwen, Janine and I quickly began to identify existing and new opportunities to work together, such as Seaweek activities held in March, annual foreshore clean-ups (held in autumn and spring), and mangrove working bees. We also discussed ways to ensure a coordinated approach, including promoting events through our databases, facebook pages, websites, our local Neighbourly website, and local community newsletters. 

 In beginning to map out the calendar we recognised other key events in the community, such as the annual Portage Crossing in February, the Business Association’s Village Food and Wine Festival in April, Ambury Farm Day in October, the wonderful Trolley Derby in November, and of course the Christmas Parade in December.  There are, of course, many other local events that happen on an annual basis such as car boot sales and school fund-raisers.

Friends of the Farm hosts an annual community visioning evening called “Sweet Talks” in May (the second one is coming up!) and we want to put that on the calendar. We’re also planning to host an annual Community Picnic and were looking at the best time for that special event, given other community activities.  Regrettably we had to postpone the planned community picnic last year because of poor weather, so we hope to avoid another disappointment this year.  

As time goes on we plan to connect with other groups in the community so we can grow the calendar of events and also talk about how we can support one another.  For example, we discussed reconnecting with Sea Cleaners to see if they can be regular supporters of our foreshore and harbour clean-ups. We also discussed teaming up with Watercare to do a working bee on the bird roosts, and Janine offered to coordinate that event with Watercare and the Friends group. We considered the ongoing need for mangrove removal in the bird habitat areas.

Finally, we talked about identifying local groups, residents and businesses who may be willing to join with others to take responsibility for looking after “a patch” of our beautiful local environment – such as an area of the foreshore. The “MY PATCH” approach is about encouraging groups of people to put their heart and their labour into an annual working bee, with the support of Friends, Residents and Ratepayers Association, and Manukau Harbour Restoration Society.

The discussions are ongoing but we made an exciting start and Carol-Anne Armitage, the former Mangere Bridge Village business manager, is going to help us take the project forward. Importantly, we all recognised that we need to work together to achieve more and also focus on doing things as well as we can, to build interest and commitment among our growing group of volunteers. We also know that our efforts build on those of many others who have done so much over the years and in whose footsteps we walk.