Northeast Valley Community Development Project team members
(from left) Jan Hudson, Steve O’Connor, John McKenzie,
Barbara Payton and Jim Neilan meet at North East Valley
Normal School o n Tuesday to discuss the future direction
of the project.
A community building project, which started in Northeast
Valley earlier this year, is ready to move into its next stage
to improve the quality of life for residents.
The Northeast Valley Community Development Project - a joint
initiative involving North East Valley Normal School, Sacred
Heart School, Dunedin North Intermediate, Jonathan Rhodes
Kindergarten, Gardens Montessori and the Islington Early
Childhood Centre - aims to improve quality of life by
identifying and utilising the area's assets and creating
strategies for better community inclusion.
The development stage of the project, which was funded by the
Ministry of Social Development, saw project workers Jan
Hudson and Vicki McDermott work within the community to
collect vast amounts of feedback regarding what valley
residents believed would make their community a better place
to live.
Ms Hudson said, as a result of their extensive data
collection, 11 main areas of concern emerged.
‘‘After the initial areas of concern were identified we
worked further with the community to determine which of those
issues people considered most important and five key themes
were identified.''
‘‘Based on that information we prepared final reports for the
six organisations we were initially focusing on and the next
step is for the community team, which we recently
established, to work on an action plan to deal with those
concerns.''
Ms Hudson said the five key themes identified as areas of
concern for valley residents were education, housing,
environment, social inclusion and community initiatives.
The focus of the community team would now be to facilitate
ways for the valley's educational institutions to improve
educational outcomes for children, upgrade areas where
inadequate housing is impacting on the wellbeing of families,
improve the safety and appearance of the valley's physical
environment and use existing resources to benefit the
community.
‘‘From the beginning, the desired outcome of this project was
to be able to hand it over to the community for them to
run,'' Ms Hudson said.
‘‘With the establishment of the project team they'll now be
able to carry on where we left off, but they are not the
total voice of the community - they are merely the
facilitators of the desired change and will continue to work
with the entire community.''
A community Christmas party has been organised at North East
Valley Normal School to report the project's findings back to
the community and provide them with something the project
identified as being desired by the community - a low-cost
community event to foster social inclusion.
• The Northeast Valley Community Development Project's
community Christmas party and final report presentation is at
North East Valley Normal School from 5.30pm Friday the 12th.
Everyone is welcome.
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