CBD by Miranda Spary
By the time you read this column, Easter Bunny will be back in his burrow, unless a local farmer mistook him for one of the less adored of his species. An Easter egg hunt has been part of our lives for a long time, teaching small children the important facts about this suspicious character who hops around in gardens encouraging the consumption of dangerously sugarladen eggs. Some of our favourite children have mistaken bunny droppings for chocolate - given the low quality of most Easter eggs, the rabbit poo probably is more delicious, not to mention considerably healthier for our youngest locals.
We need to do all we can to make living in the Wakatipu as attractive as possible for young people. In case you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll be aware they’re becoming a rare breed. Smart countries around the world are doing all they can to attract them as the number of over 60’s is increasing and the number of children being born is falling so dramatically. We are lucky that so many under 30’s from all over the globe want to come and work here, but they struggle to find somewhere to live. We need to work together on solutions. Maybe people with whole house AirBNBs could let part of them be used by local workers and in return they could help with the cleaning and ensuring that the visitors don’t trash the place, or cause problems with noise, rubbish etc. Plenty of cities around the world have banned AirBNB totally because of the negative consequences to the community, so this might be a way to make it good for all parties. Perhaps people with young families could offer a room to someone who can help with babysitting, or an older person on their own might want someone to play Scrabble with them, or walk their dog. Perhaps you want to learn another language? What could be better than having someone living in and getting you up to speed with it? We’ve always had young people staying with us on the wwoof and Helpx programs and it’s been terrific - people with the energy and enthusiasm to travel this far are generally very good company.
Don’t forget this weekend on April 15th is the great big, brand new LATIN KIWI INTEGRATION FESTIVAL. It’s on at the QT Memorial Centre from 1.30 to 9 and there are free salsa and bachata dance classes, loads of live music, inspirational talks and so much more. It’s for every age group and there’s no entrance fee, but there’ll be food and drinks to buy. Lucky us having so many great new locals making great new events for us to enjoy.
The Wakatipu Community Foundation has been going for only five years and already has $30 million in bequests. What a brilliant effort! Until it becomes fully self funding, which should be in the next 5 - 10 years, it would be great to get some more generous donors to contribute to the unsexy but essential admin side. They’ve already given away $2.5 million to the community and that is going to keep growing and growing. Remember when the Central Lakes Trust started in 2000? There were people who wanted the money to be given out to everyone who had a power account in Central Otago. That meant each account holder would have been given just enough money for a set of new tyres and all the money would have been used up. Instead, the trust was founded and now it has given away over $20 million dollars to all sorts of worthy causes and it’s still going strong.
Impact100 only started in 2020 and already it’s given nearly half a million dollars away to all sorts of different projects. If you want to join for 2023, be quick! It closes at the end of April and if you’re new to town or keen to be part of a fantastic group of women (sorry, chaps, you can’t join, but you can certainly sponsor your favourite woman or women). Everyone donates $1000 and then community groups are invited to apply for the money. see impact100@wakatipucommunityfoundation.org for more info.
All these initiatives are just making our community better and better - they support sports and arts, health and happiness, education and conservation. We’d all be the poorer without them, and the more we support these projects, the better it all gets.
One last shout out to fabulous Matt Rose who’s doing Matt’s Good Walk - he’s walking the 1400 km Te Araroa Trail hoping to raise $250,000 for a number of his favourite charities and he’s well over halfway to his goal moneywise. I hear a whisper that he should be coming down the Macetown Road on Tuesday(today) if you want to cheer him on, or heading to Queenstown on Wednesday. You can sponsor him on www.mattsgoodwalk.nz
